Am I Next? (The Curious Case of Politico Ownership Issues)

A fan named Martin sent this link to me today. It's from the US political blog The Huffington Post, and it's an article about how The Politico, a US political magazine based in Washington, has issued a cease and desist order to a British blog called Tory-Politico. Basically, The Politico doesn't like the 120,293rd most viewed site in the UK using the name Politico and has demanded... well, I think the Media Bistro article summed it up best.

"In a cease and desist letter to the blog's founder, Politico counsel Dow Lohnes demanded that the UK blog (1) cease all use of the mark and name Tory Politico (2) cease all use of confusing design and graphics (3) transfer the url tory-politico to Capital News (Politico parent) (4) verify in writing the permanent cease of any future use of mark, trade name, domain and trade dress that is confusingly similar to Politico within ten business days."

To his credit, Tory-Politico's Jason Brown says that they're not going quietly into that good night and that The Politico, for all intents and purposes, can step off. But he puts it better than I can saying, "For the record I have no intentions of ether changing the name of this blog or transferring the domain name to Capital News, though I do not know how long I will be able to hold out with the wolves at the door. I am anticipating escalation on their part as I am refusing to comply with demands 1 and 3, so in the next couple of days I will be considering my option, this could involve launching a 'Save Tory Politico' campaign and a fundraising operation to fund a defence."

For the record, at least according to Merriam Webster, the word "politico" dates back to 1630, so The Politico is about 380 years to late to stake a claim, but if they had it would probably been under public domain at this point anyway.

Let me state for the record that I stand with our fellow Politicos in Great Britain in an act of transatlantic blogging solidarity, in the hopes that if the boom falls on Guelph Politico they might be so good as to return the favour.

Thanks to Martin for the link, and thanks for reading.