My brother just opened up his very first CafePress store! His current design is a parody of the 24Hr Fitness design, called 24Hr Fatness. I have one of his shirts, and let me tell you something, Curly, it gets quite a response from the ladies.
I asked Jeremy to tell WWdN readers why he made the shirts, and here’s what he had to say:
I did it because I was tired of seeing the 24Hr Fitness employees walking around who were more out of shape than me trying to be all like “hey, you should join 24Hr Fitness so you can get into shape”. Yeah, whatever tiny, you have cheese on your lip.
I just hope that Cafepress leaves it up there, they have a thingy about not selling things that resemble other products. So we’ll see. If they sell and it gets taken down then I’ll do it my damn self! Jenn [his wife] and I are going to be working on a bunch more stuff too. Jenn has the “Party Monkey” and “Drag Monkey” line she’s been doing for fun for years.
Am I buggin’ you? I don’t mean to bug ya…
Okay Edge, play the blues…
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Satire and Parody are protections for copyright material, which is different from the applicable matter, trademark. I am not a lawyer, but I’d say that if 24 Hour Fitness gets wind of this, they’ve got a slam-dunk on their hands. Whatever it is, Hello? It’s not totally covered, and you have an affirmative duty to defend your trademark or else you’ll be powerless to defend it against later infringements. Furthermore, parody and satire are defense, not an excuse. Even if the law is on your side, you’ll have to get a lawyer to explain that fact to the judge, so after lawyer fees and court costs, your profits are gone even if you win.
Again, IANAL, but the standard probably has to do with whether someone’s likely to confuse the 24 Hour Fatness with ibid. Fitness, and yeah, stealing the appearance of the logo will probably fit the bill.
re: The copyright infringement issue: that’s why I got mine right away. I really do think that 24 Fitness will cause a stink over this and I wanted to get mine before they were unavailable.
Good luck Jeremy!
…I forgot to remind anyone that didn’t know that Jeremy appeared in an episode of TNG (‘When The Bough Breaks’), along with Wil’s sister. Jeremy’s character, Mason as I recall, was pretty backround (don’t even think he had any lines) but Wil’s sister played the girl with the crazy musical instrument. I’m impressed by Wil’s power of persuassion to get them on the show!
Wil,
Besides being a big nostalgic TNG fan, I’m also a huge U2 fan and I run the Larry Mullen, Jnr. Online Fanlisting [http://www.stardust-dream.com/larry] off of my domain.
It’s great to see that you love U2. I love when Bono says that… “Didn’t mean to BUG YA!”
Love + Peace + Admiration,
luv jackie v.
stardust-dream.com
xoxoxoxoxoxo
P.S. Ever think about coming to speak at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, NY? We’ve had everybody from President Bill Clinton to Bruce Campbell at my school! We’d love you there!
Ky favorite U2 reference! I loves the Wheaton Boys!
Has the site been taken down already? “24hr fatness” appears to be there under wilsbrother, but there’s no content at all in the store.
Hey – maybe it could be WWJWD.net? (What Will Jeremy Wheaton Do)?
Well, as I had expected, but hoped not to have happen, cafepress is putting my 24hr fatness shirt under scrutiny. Sooooo, I have modified the shirt and added another one. You can get to both of them here (http://www.jeremywheaton.com/store.htm) if you like. I will be putting more designs up shortly and please let Wil or me know if you have any suggestions. Thanks!
-Jeremy
I really love your Cafepress store…
My shirt shipped on the 8th!! *does a happy little fat dance* Glad to see the shirts are still available. Okay, so splain something to me: I don’t get the nerds do it squared.