This seems rather odd, but the TTC has decided to send Robot Johnny a cease and desist letter for his anagram remix of subway station names. I agree with the people at Boing Boing who write, “Trademark is supposed to protect rightsholders from competitors who use their marks to confuse the public in the course of commerce. No one who saw RobotJohnny’s genius map would have confused it for a second with a real TTC map and sent him a subway token…. Torontonians go to bat for the TTC all the time, shouting at the province and the feds to beef up funding. We’ve put up with the disruption of the Sheppard Subway, we’ve lived through the years when they couldn’t even get the platform clocks to work. Where the hell do they get off wasting legal fees threatening bloggers for producing noncommercial humourous, harmless remixes?” You can read an article on it in the Toronto Star today.
If you wish to make a compaint on behalf of Robot Johnny you can do so by clicking here and filling out this form.
