NYSE Sends Cease and Desist Letter To News Organization

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, the New York Stock Exchange has registered a trademark for their trading floor, and they claim that no one can use a photograph of the trading floor without permission."

Take it to court

[geekoid]

Fight it all the way. Taking a picture of something that is open for a news story is perfectly allowed.

Re:Almost makes sense...

[Sarten-X]

NYSE is an exchange company. They are not investors, they do not tell banks to accept bad loans, and don't really do much of anything that caused the recession. Blaming NYSE is like blaming Ford for a bank robbery, because the robbers drove a Ford getaway car.

Re:Almost makes sense...

[Sarten-X]

Gee, maybe I'm wrong. Let's go look it up real quick [wikipedia.org]...

Trademark dilution is a trademark law concept giving the owner of a famous trademark standing to forbid others from using that mark in a way that would lessen its uniqueness. In most cases, trademark dilution involves an unauthorized use of another's trademark on products that do not compete with, and have little connection with, those of the trademark owner.

So there's this news article about the FBI and investment companies, and TPM threw NYSE's trademark on there because... um... why, exactly? Well, maybe because it's a generic "stock trading" image that people will recognize, but it's not generic. It's a trademark. Putting the NYSE image on an unrelated article reinforces the idea that the NYSE is generic, and that certainly would "lessen its uniqueness".

Looks like dilution to me. Reading the actual C&D letter, the NYSE is not at all requesting censorship of the article. They just want the picture removed so they aren't directly associated with an insider trading investigation.