MTA Licensing sent San Francisco T-Shirt designer Joe Moore a cease and desist, causing his T-Shirt to be removed from sale by Cafepress.com.

The reason: It infringed on MTA trademarks.

Problem is, the T-Shirt had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the NYC MTA or its trademarks – it was a shirt satirizing the San Francisco Muni System.

When SFWeekly picked up the story, they called MTA Spokesman Aaron Donovan for MTA’s side of the story:

“We have no claim on Muni’s icons, we would need to look into the specifics of this case in greater detail to determine why the letter may have been sent,” he said. “The images on Mr. Moore’s blog did not appear to show anything that would represent a trademark violation against the New York MTA.”

There is a dark side to the SFWeekly story though – SFMTA Spokeman expressed an interest in SFMTA pursuing its own licensing program.

My advice to the bay area: Look at MTA’s behavior, and do not let SFMTA do this under any circumstances.

Read more at SFWeekly and Moore’s blog, 40withegg.