Penny Arcade vs. American Greetings

ferrocene writes "Penny Arcade's American Mcgee/Strawberry Shortcake spoof posted last Monday was pulled because someone at American Greetings got wind of it and set their lawyers on them. PA's forums are abuzz with activity. I'm pro-funny, myself."

How about it...

[bgog]

Does anyone have this comic mirrored anywhere? I'm sure we'd all love to see what the fuss is about.

Reminiscent of the Barbie Girl fuss

[Chocaholic]

This reminds me of the fuss a couple of years ago about Aqua's entertaining pop ditty "Barbie Girl", which quite effectively parodied the apparent lifestyle of the doll (if you haven't heard it, you really don't want to, trust me).

Mattel tried every trick in the book to get the song either wiped or get a share of the cash, but to no avail.

I suspect Penny Arcade were just not wanting the inevitable lawsuit (why does *everything* have to end up in a lawsuit these days? rhetorical...), but it seems as though the parody defence is still just about alive in law.

My email to the company

[Glyndwr]

You know, you really should stop and take stock: how much harm was that parody *really* doing you? How much harm has this heavy-handed action *really* done you? Is this really how you want to be percevied by potential customers?

Short, to the point, and not abusive. Hopefully they will take note. Frankly, I think they need to lighten up.

Easy boycott

[Galvatron]

With Mother's Day just around the corner (May 11th), this is an easy boycott to participate in. Make sure not to buy cards from American or Carlton. By the time the next holiday rolls around, the situation will probably be resolved.

Between Penny-Arcade and Slashdot readers, there are probably enough people to make a difference in their Mother's Day card sales, and unlike boycotting the entire movie industry, this is a really easy one to do. Also, unlike with an MPAA member boycott, they won't simply be able to attribute declining sales to increasing piracy.

So buy Hallmark, tell your friends to do likewise, and let the American Greetings Company know you're doing it. Maybe we can start to teach companies that in the information age, sending out indiscriminate C&D letters in the hopes of intimidation will cause more harm than good to their brand names.

Re:Hope the lawsuit gets thrown out, if there is o

[mike_mgo]

I'm kinda speaking from ignorance here but...

Is this technically a parody? I thought of parody as imitation, not copying, of the original. So Spaceballs or Bored of the Rings are parodies where it is obvious what the source material is but none of the characters, names or places are directly from the originals.

In this case the actual name of the character is being used in the cartoon. Now, if they'd used the same image and made up a new name I don't think AG would have a leg to stand on, but in the current form they may be within their rights.

I don't know the law on this, and maybe my understanding parody is not the same as a court would see it, but I think AG may be right.

They need to talk to Brad Templeton

[Quila]

When Mastercard sent him a nastygram [netfunny.com] over a sick parody on Netfunny of their "...for everything else, there's Mastercard" ads, he sent them back a response -- in the form of a Mastercard ad parody:

Web site hosting for anybody: $10/month and up

Threatening letters to people who satirize you, hoping they won't know the law: $500

Reputation as giant corporation required to intimidate small publishers: $billions

Supreme court decisions protecting parody and satire from accusations of copyright and trademark infringement... Priceless

There are some rights money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard's lawyers.

Of course, it didn't help Mastercard that the target of their attempted intimidation is the chairman of the EFF [eff.org].

Re:Fair Use

[Anonymous Coward]

Penny Arcade should get in touch with the MAD Magazine guys in New York; I'm sure they'd be glad to help. MAD parodies EVERYTHING, and has refined their anti-lawyer kungfoo to an art over the years.

This months MAD: "Bored of the Rings: Again" :)

american greetings slashdotted

[juniorkindergarten]

It appears that the contact us section of american greetings has been slashdotted.

500 Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, [e-mail] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Here's what I was attempting to send, feel free to use mine at your convenience.

Regarding the spoof of strawberry shortcake at penny-arcade.com [penny-arcade.com]
I think that your company is over zealous with its requirement to remove the parody comic from it's web site. You should be aware however your action been posted at several online news forums about your meager attempt at censorship. A pardoy is just that and it in by no means hurts the trade marks, nor does it cause confusion with the original work. I have also written a letter to the creator of the parody urging him to stand up your legal department and challenge your stupidity in court. If he chooses to do so I will gladly donate to his legal efforts.
Furthermore, I will urge my family, friends and co-workers never to buy any product from american greetings ever again, unless this sillyness by your company comes to an end.
Yours Truly
bla bla bla

Weird Al Yankovic Interview

[MyNameIsFred]

I really wish I understood the legal limits of parody and satire. It is often cited that copyright law allows it. At the same time, I once heard an interview with Weird Al Yankovic. He was talking about his parodies of pop songs. He mentioned that he always got permission from the copyright owners before he published one. He almost always got it, but he did ask. This would suggest that there are some potential legal hassles if you're not careful.

legal action against a web comic?

[cyb3rllama]

Come on, does American Greetings, Corp. really think attacking a legitimate parody really furthers its business goals as a company? Did the person(s) initiating this action have no knowledge of how an Internet based community would respond to such an assault on civil liberties? Did this action really protect and further your "Strawberry Shortcake" brand or simply generate much deserved hype around a web comic?

I would like to see you do the right thing as a company... retract your legal threats and allow Penny Arcade to repost that comic. Imagine the goodwill (and sales) you will generate from the Internet community.

Besides, I easily found the "forbidden" comic on an alternate web site (see attachment). Now this single panel will be seen by many, many more people simply because of your action. One second thought, thanks for all the free publicity for the web comic community! Keep up the great work!

By the way, I have a web comic (http://particlesphere.com/) whose main character is a redheaded female... sorta looks like Strawberry Whoever if you squint! Please threaten me with legal action... I really need the publicity!

Thank you,
Will Jayroe
http://particlesphere.com/

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming you didn't check the site, but PA posted a parody response in regards to the McFarlane/American McGee toy figurine line for The Wizard of Oz. Basically the characters everyone knows was turned into these demonic looking things and Dorothy looked kinda like some bondage babe. So in response, PA did kind of a "what will they do next" kinda strip and thus posted the dominatrix Strawberry Shortcake who had just recently whipped a prone Plum Pudding (another girl who, as a toy, smells like plums) in the rear. The title on the picture was "American McGee's Strawberry Shortcake".

In context, it's funny as hell. Personally Care Bears or Rainbow Bright would have been even funnier.

Re:How about it...

[Anonymous Coward]

ftp://members.aol.com/matthewbrinegar/straw.gif [aol.com]

Try that instead. AOL's got the bandwidth.

Parody or not?

[phorm]

We've got a big conflict on here as to whether this particular piece of "art" is indeed a parody or not. My question is, can an individual piece of art only "parody" one thing, or can it parody multiple sources?

In this case, yes, it seems to parody American McGee, but it seems to parody the "cutesy oh so good" Strawberry Shortcake, poking fun at a seamier dark side of the annoyingly sweet character. Does the fact that AM is mentioned disallow also parodying Strawberry, I've never heard anything against dual-parody.

Or maybe it's that the two items being parodied are fairly unrelated, but I still don't see why dual-parody would be disallowed - could an arguement as the word-simularity between "American Greetings" and "American McGee" (if AM had done cards for AG, Mad Magazine often did shorts like this)

I do see the point made by American Greetings as to their trademark though - if they'd sent a nicer letter this probably would have gone better for them. I think a lot of the problem comes not from the use of the copyright bat, but just in legalese scare tactics when a simply "please, we'd appreciate it if you didn't do that" might work better - or at least as a start.

Not satire, but public domain

[SpittingTrashcan]

The issue with the PA strip is not satire fair use as many have pointed out. Strawberry Shortcake is not being parodied, and therefore the use of the character is illegal. But then why did the PA artists use the character at all? They're clearly not ignorant of copyright law.

I believe that Gabe and Tycho thought that Strawberry Shortcake was now in the public domain; and if copyrights had reasonable terms she would be. However, copyrights now last for at least 20 years, and more if you have enough sway in Congress (see Disney).

If American Greetings were still using the Strawberry Shortcake character (the way Disney is still using Mickey) I could see their justification for protecting their copyright. As an artist, I wouldn't want my body of work being coopted even as I was creating and promoting it, and I think the Penny Arcade guys would agree. But Strawberry Shortcake is a dead concept, to such a degree that I would bet nearly nobody even knew she was owned by American Greetings.

American Greetings has an opportunity to demonstrate good corporate citizenship, improve their public image, and set an example for other media companies by dropping their copyright on Strawberry Shortcake and any other properties they aren't using and don't plan to use again. There's no sense in wasting money and time to protect things you won't use.

Re:My email to the company

[Glyndwr]

Up until this morning, the only use of the words "strawberry shortcake" in the Penny Arcade cartoon or the associated news article were in the GIF and therefore un-indexable by Google. After this morning, it's all over the web like white on rice, and so are image mirrors. I can see what you're trying to say but you have to admit, from a practical viewpoint, this has not been a successful tactic.

AGC Trademarks and Subsidiaries

[Anonymous Coward]

Strawberry Shortcake, Popples, Care Bears and related trademarks are federally registered trademarks of Those Characters From Cleveland ("TCFC"), an American Greetings Company. All 978 Trademark Records at USPTO.gov [uspto.gov]

American Greetings Corporation (AM) (#2 US maker of greeting cards)
One American Road , Cleveland, Ohio

DesignWare party goods, GuildHouse candles, PlusMark gift wrap, and Designers' Collection stationery, balloons, giftware

Subsidiaries:
Those Characters From Cleveland, Inc. (character licensing)
AGC, Inc. (Design licensing)
Learning Horizons (supplemental educational products)
Magnivision (nonprescription reading glasses)
AmericanGreetings.com (online cards)
Bluemountain.com
Beatgreets.com
Passitar ound.com
AG Industries, Inc. (Product display fixtures)
Gibson Greetings, Inc.
American Pie Acquisition Corp.
Egreetings Network, Inc. (egreetings.com)
Plus Mark, Inc.
Carlton Cards Retail, Inc.
CPS Company of Delaware Inc.
Carlton Cards Limited (Canada, UK)
Camden Graphics Group (UK)
Hanson White Ltd. (UK)
Gibson Greetings International Limited (UK)
The Ink Group Publishers Ltd. (U.K.)
Carlton Cards Ltd. (Ireland)
Carlton Mexico, S.A. de C.V.
John Sands (Australia, New Zealand) Ltd.
The Ink Group PTY Ltd. (Australia)
The Ink Group NZ Ltd.
S.A. Greetings Company (PTY) Ltd. (South Africa)
Memory Lane SDN BHD (85% owned) (Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Malaysia)

Top Competitors:
Hallmark (principal competitor)
123Greetings
Corbis - owned by Microsoft

Last 10k [sec.gov]

Re:ENJOY COCAINE

[Jace of Fuse!]

The Coca-Cola Company brings this action to enjoin defendant from printing, distributing and selling commercially a poster which consists of an exact blown-up reproduction of plaintiff's familiar "Coca-Cola" trademark and distinctive format except for the substitution of the script letters "ine" for "-Cola", so that the poster reads "Enjoy Cocaine." Jurisdiction is based on 28 U.S.C. 1338 and 1332.

That was their mistake. I would have modified the trademark "WAVE" myself. Perhaps reversed it or made it two intersecting lines. Oddly enough, the Coca-Cola "WAVE" is a registered trademark, just like the Nike "SWOOSH".

Parody is not against the law, and in fact has been successfully protected by free speech rights. Trademark infringement will still get you in trouble.

Parodies can RESEMBLE their targets, but they should also be distinctive enough that they do not exactly copy the "victim".