When I first read the headline of this Abigail Tracy article I thought no… they can’t be serious… this headline must be click-bait. Well, let me just say right up-front that I was wrong. Chobani, the Greek yogurt company that features ads with my childhood crush, John Stamos, is now being sued for copyright infringement for sending a tweet that said, and this is an exact quote:
“@DovSeidman Thanks for inspiring the world to care about ‘how.’ Can you help inspire the food industry, too? http://thunderclap.it/howmatters”.
Now, do you see where Chobani violated the law or someone’s rights? No? Well me neither. Apparently, author Dov Seidman (the @DovSeidman referenced in Chobani’s tweet) has a different opinion. Mr. Seidman alleges that Chobani based its recent ad tagline “How Matters” on the concepts from his book, ‘How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything’. This is the basis for his suit for copyright infringement.
To my surprise, it seems that Mr. Seidman was able to secure trademarks for certain uses of the word “how”. Though I'm still trying to wrap my brain around how he was able to do that, it seems that Chobani actually has a trademark for its tagline "How Matters.” So how exactly does Mr. Seidman think he’ll be able to prove his copyright infringement claim?
Yes, as I said before… Mr. Seidman points directly to the above tweet as prima facie evidence of Chobani’s intent to violate his copyright. And for damages, he wants, “undisclosed damages including any profits Chobani has earned from the campaign” which, of course, could be in the millions!
My response to all of this is “Wow”! I knew we were a litigious society but this is taking it too far don’t you think? Chobani is a large company that can afford a top flight law firm to represent them. Plus, their legal footing seems secure because they own the trademark for ‘How Matters’. However, what if something like that were to happen to a small business owner like one of us? I mean we send tweets everyday what if someone took a similar stance with one of them? How would we be able to defend ourselves?
Here it seems that Chobani’s decision to take care of its intellectual property (i.e. secure its trademark) might be the difference maker; so, you should probably think of doing the same thing if you can. To find out more about how to do this, check out our intellectual property cheat sheet and our cost-benefit analysis of the various types of intellectual property. And please, everyone, be more cautious when sending out your tweets!
