This week I am going to shine a little more light on the gratuitous litigation behavior of the MTA litigation licensing department in areas not related to their current conflict with StationStops.

We are collecting these anecdotes for public awareness, so if you have one, please send me the info here. (PS I already know about ‘Stop’ Bagels!)

This guy, Joe, who lives in SAN FRANCISCO, made a T-shirt which parodied SAN FRANCISCO public transit’s ‘N’ line, which was underserviced and overcrowded. He used imagery from SAN FRANCISCO’s transit system and added another T-Shirt with more lines.

Guess who sent him a cease and desist?

The New York MTA of course!

Now, why is the New York MTA concerned about a shirt which parodies a transit system on the OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY and uses that transit systems imagery?

Because, you see, letters with colored circles around them are the intellectual property of the MTA!

I choose to select this case to highlight first, because it really is the most absurd and inappropriate abuse by MTA’s lawyers to date (that I know of anyway).

What’s really sad is that NONE of the letter/color combinations match any existing MTA subway line (the J line color is *close*, but tan, not brown).

As is usually the case in Copyfraud, Joe took his T-Shirt and went home because the complexity and costs of defending oneself against intellectual property claims by the pargest public transportation system in the US is not within the scope of normal persons ‘todo’ list.

Now if Joe was selling his shirt directly, he could simply ignore the claim and MTA would have to bring him to court to make their case (which they would likely never do, because its BS). However, since there is a go-between which will passively acknowledge copyright claims (in this case, Cafepress), the MTA can use them to enforce their takedown without it EVERY being proved in court!

This is the same case with Apple and StationStops. I refuted all of MTA’s claims and refused to remove my app from the app store. However, MTA sent Apple a C&D as well, and Apple just honored it by taking the app out of the store without conversation with me regarding the legitimacy of the matter.

This is how fulfillment houses have become the new enforcer of copyfraud in the US.

US copyright law was never designed to work this way – the onus is supposed to be on the claimant to make his case – but with companies like Apple and Cafepress taking action on say-so, the system no longer protects legitimate businesses.

Not only is this copyright claim likely groundless, but much worse, MTA actually spent its time shutting down someone who was satirically (also likely protected speech) criticizing a public transit system on the OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY, using symbols from that transit system which MTA insists it ‘owns’.

Its gratuitous and inappropriate corporate behavior.

The purpose of copyright law is to protect your intellectual property from being used in ways that directly affect your ability to do business. Its not designed so that you can seek to frivolously profiteer from the licensing of letters and colors when used in contexts which are COMPLETELY unrelated to your company.