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Full text of this with links can be found on my blog at: http://ideas.4brad.com/archives/000064.html

Remember Mastercard's attempt to pull down a joke in 2001? Today, we received a cease and desist letter from American Express's lawyers over a 13 year old joke making fun of their ad style.

The original joke: http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/91q2/amexprew.html

Copy of the Cease and Desist Letter: http://www.templetons.com/brad/leydig.html

Here is the letter I wrote back to the lawyers...

You can "Screw More" with an American Express Lawyer

Do you know me?

I built a famous company with a famous name, and then satirists made fun of me by taking advantage of the constitutional protections afforded parody when it comes to trademark law?

That's why I retained Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd, the "American Express Lawyers." Should you ever feel your reputation lost or stolen by free speech and satire, just one call gets LVM to write a threatening cease and desist letter--usually on the same day--citing all sorts of important sounding laws but ignoring the realities of parody. Most innocent web sites will cave in, not knowing their rights. LVM will pretend it has never read cases like L.L. Bean, Inc. v. High Society and dozens of others. There's no preset limit on the number of people you can threaten, so you can bully as much as you wish.

After all, Being Giant and Intimidating has its Privileges.

American Express Lawyers: Don't leave your home page without them.

See the Brad Ideas blog (ideas.4brad.com) for a few more details.

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