Sean Cairncross, the party’s chief counsel, wrote (.pdf) the Foster City, California online vendor that the GOP “takes infringements upon its trademarks seriously.”
“Please cease and desist from allowing vendors to utilize the federally registered trademarks of the RNC or we will be forced to consider a legal remedy,” Cairncross wrote CafePress.
CafePress attorney Paul Alan Levy, of Public Citizen, noted Thursday that some uses of the party’s trademarks are critical of the GOP, but many are not.
“The majority of the images over which the RNC has threatened to sue reflect positive opinions about Republicans,” he said. “Several designs simply put the elephant logo on a T-shirt, so that the wearer can walk around bragging about his or her adherence to Republicanism.”
Others, Levy pointed out, “make highly favorable comments on Republicanism, such as a design portraying a larger elephant trailed by two smaller elephants and the words, ‘I’m raising my children right.'”