A small business owner in Santa Monica, California was none-too-pleased to receive a cease and desist letter about his website ‘Cosby Sweaters.com,’ Gawker reports.
Bill Cosby’s lawyers told business owner Kiley Kmiec, the co-founder of CosbySweaters.com
, a website for “sports fans who love music, tech, pop culture, and dumb Internet videos,” that basically pretty much anything that has Bill Cosby and sweaters in the same sentence is an infringement of the actor’s trademarked intellectual property.Kmiec told Gawker that he sees the site as a tribute to the comedian, but a cease and desist letter he received earlier this month from the Manhattan-based lawfirm Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler read as follows:
Mr. Cosby has used his name for decades in connection with activities as an entertainer. His name is famous throughout the world and he has acquired tremendous goodwill and valuable intellectual property rights, including a United States trademark registration. (See attached Schedule 8.) In addition, as you know, the multi-colored, multi-patterned sweaters that Mr. Cosby wore on ‘The Cosby Show,’ an iconic television program that aired from 1984 through 1992 and has continued in broadcast as reruns and in syndication both domestically and internationally through the present, are strongly associated with Cosby. The term ‘Cosby Sweater’ instantly evokes Mr. Cosby and The Cosby Show.”
Read the whole story at Gawker.