August 25th, 2009 | 
Author: It appears that the MTA attorney cannot tell the difference between New York’s trademarked route bullets and those of the San Francisco MUNI. In an overzealous attempt to stop infringement at all cost the MTA legal department is going after anyone who sells an image that contains a letter in a circle even if it is not in the color of New York’s MTA:
Someone who designed a T-shirt to parody and criticize San Francisco’s MUNI system (clearly protected first amendment use) received a letter from Lester Freundlich, defender of the New York MTA against bagel houses, cookie shops, and postcard vendors, ordering him to cease and desist.
Is the NY MTA claiming that they now own the trademarks and/or copyrights of the SF MUNI? Is that lawyer colorblind? And finally hasn’t he ever heard of fair use when it comes to parody? Does the New York MTA now think it controls all symbols that contain a letter or number inside a circle?
See our previous story from several days ago for more hijinks from the MTA Legal Department.
Posted in Photography and the Law
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Thank you for the moral support!
Success! The SF Weekly picked up my story ( http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2009/09/nycs_mta_says_they_own_the_mun.php ), made some phone calls to the NY MTA, and verified they “have no claim on Muni’s icons,” and “would need to look into the specifics of this case in greater detail to determine why the letter may have been sent.” In addition, the NY MTA states that the “images on Mr. Moore’s blog did not appear to show anything that would represent a trademark violation against the New York MTA.”
Thanks again everyone for your support!