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You need to know about this one: Corporation harasses blogger

An outfit called MonaVie, which markets exotic berry juice purported to fight aging, peel off pounds, and do wondrous unspecified things for your health, is suing Lazy Man and Money for daring to write a review questioning its product and its sales strategy. The claim the company makes is that merely typing the MonaVie company name and putting it in the post tags infringes MonaVie’s trademark.

This is clear and present intimidation and a blatant attempt on the part of a corporation, MonaVie, to harass an independent writer for exercising rights of free speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and, in the bargain, to cast a chill on every American’s right to comment honestly and frankly on products and on the marketing strategies used to promote them. It is not, by the way, against the law to mention a product’s name in a published work, and a strong argument can be made that placing a product name in a post’s metadata in no way infringes upon the trademark. In fact, the argument that it does so is laughable—we can be sure the first judge who sees this action will laugh it right out of court.

Here’s what we need to do, my friends, to protest this outrageous infringement on our rights as U.S. citizens and as writers.

First, please go here:

Lazy Man and Money, MonaVie Scam

then here:

Lazy Man: MonaVie Is Trying to Sue Me

and here:

Lazy Man: MonaVie Sends a Second Cease-and-Desist Order

and here:

Lazy Man: MonaVie Employee Calls Me an “Annoying Douche”

And finally, read this:

Consumerist: MonaVie Hits Blogger over Trademarks in Metadata

Then, assuming you have a blog or website, as Brip-Blap and The Consumerist suggest, fearlessly link to all of these articles. Let them sue us one and all!

Never fear: it is not illegal to utter a brand name. MonaVie is not G-d, and even if it were, it’s still not illegal to utter the word “God.” At least, not in America. If you’re concerned that the company’s absurd claim about metadata might, by some wild stretch of the imagination, have validity, simply refrain from using the name in your title, in your post tags, and in your SEO plug-in.

Feel free to copy and paste this entire post to your site. Funny about Money hereby relinquishes all copyright to this post (“You need to know about this one: Corporation harasses blogger”) and releases it to the public domain. Splog away, everyone!

4 thoughts on “You need to know about this one: Corporation harasses blogger”

  1. @ Frugal: Hee heeeeee! They’re for the LUDICROUS acai berries!!!! How hilarious. Folks… That’s what’s (allegedly) in the highly questionable product the illustrious company mentioned here promotes. See the Consumerist report, the 3,300 comments on Lazy Man’s first post, and several other sites (just Google “acai”) for the absurdity of the claims made for this comestible and for the…dare we say it?…scamminess of certain marketing efforts involving the stuff.

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