AJT gets “cease and desist” from Toyota

AJT got a cease and desist from Toyota for their steering wheel emblem overlay. What do y’all guys think. IMO it’s bullshit!!

 

Who's AJT?

 

AJT DESIGN (ajtdesign-llc.com)

 

Why? It's protected intellectual property. Pay for the rights, or don't use it. How is that confusing?

 

Intellectual property is something big corporations keep a tight grip on. I like AJT’s stuff; have been running his key fob for a couple years now, but this isnt overly surprising.

I was able to get the trd fob before that became unavailable at some point.

Wonder if IP rights also played into why that became unavailable eventually.

 

Wonder if other vendors are getting hit up?

 

Gotta wonder how Toyota zeroed in on a small retailer selling a few trinkets.

 

There are people on here "that fight the good fight" and report vendors that infringe on big company's rights. Not sure the thread someone was bragging about reporting people in sasdly.


Same thing happened to the person making the Weathertech badges with Toyo logos

 

I wouldn't throw the blame solely in Toyota's lap. I've dealt with this numerous times around the internet. A lot of these corporations put a law firm on retainer. The firms are IPO lawyers and their sole purpose is to find infringements. Anyway, I'm sure there's some kind of extra compensation when the law firms discover an infringement and get it taken care of. They can be pretty aggressive about it. And in my experience, unrelenting. Depending on the circumstances (usage), contacting the actual owner of the IPO can result in a favorable outcome. My two biggest experiences were with using Yamaha's tuning fork logo for a forum. Contacting Yamaha directly eventually allowed us to use their logo. Obviously in their best interest and all. Second instance was with VW. An owner's group I ran made t-shirts that used the VW logo. We were selling swag to fund club events and that's it. A little back and forth with VW and they allowed us to sell the shirts and eventually added the same shirt to their own offerings. I still think they sell it.

Results will definitely vary.

 

Big enough companies will actually employ people to search out for instances where their Organizations IP is being infringed upon; mainly media organizations that make the majority of their money off their ip (content).

This. Anyone remember when backcountry dot com was suing everyone and anyone for using the name backcountry? It was a law firm they hired searching out for ip infringements. This is literally the only thing they do.

https://www.adventure-journal.com/2...ens-of-businesses-for-using-term-backcountry/

 

Whats so surprising about it? You okay with someone using something you created and profiting from it? It sucks yeah but we arent 5 years old to comprehend this logic

 

Once they get big enough they do.

 

And if they haven't, it's just a matter of time.

 

In the US legal environment, trademarks need to be continuously policed or the owner can lose it. Too many places using the trademark without permission risks it becoming a generic term (think zipper, yo-yo, bubble wrap, kleenex, xerox, plexiglas...). So Toyota is more or less obligated to go after AJT.

 

Explain why you think it's BS

If you owned a company and had a logo that represented your brand, would you be OK with others using it without permission to make money off of it for themselves?

Honestly I think it was cool of Toyota to do the cease and desist letter, instead of coming at them for copyright infringement. That logo is copyrighted and if you make money off of someone else's copyrighted material without permission, you can be sued into oblivion for it. At least they were basically just told to stop.

 

Disney is RABID about protecting their mickey mouse silhouette among other things. The artist Deadmaus gets hits with legal threats from them basically any time he sets foot in the US.

 

Makes sense. Good point. They could have sued him to the point his business was gone.

 

Deadmau5....that name brings back memories, some of which I care not to remember.

 

True. Didn’t think of that way. Good point!