As I have bored you to death with over the past 4 weeks, a lawyer from MTA legal called me on the phone and vehemently accused my website of infringing on MTA copyright, pretending to be an official MTA site, and asked for my lawyer’s contact information so he could send a cease and desist.

When The Stamford Advocate asked MTA for a quote on the matter, they backpedaled completely:

“Schoenfeld said Freundlich also told him that the stationstops.com site may infringe the MTA’s copyright, but (MTA Spokesman) Ortiz said the MTA has no issue with the site.”

Now, the same thing has happened to Joe Moore, a T-Shirt designer in San Francisco. Joe made a T-Shirt satirizing San Francisco’s MUNI system – but it was the same NY MTA lawyer who sent a cease and desist to Moore insisting the T-Shirt infringed on MTA’s Intellectual Property.

This week when SFWeekly called MTA for comment, MTA Spokesman Aaron Donovan stated:

“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.”

MTA – it is your LEGAL DEPARTMENTS RESPONSIBILITY to ‘LOOK INTO THE DETAILS’ BEFORE THEY SEND CEASE AND DESISTS TO SMALL BUSINESSES.

It is completely unacceptable for MTA legal to be making unsubstantiated IP claims against individuals and small business without due diligence, and then just shrugging your shoulders when you get called on it.

THAT IS COPYFRAUD.