Here's something I've been meaning to rant about for some time now. I'm not sure why it took this long to write it down. Good thing, though, now that there's some timely news to it....
Trademark infringement.
Or, sorta. Not in any defensible manner. Which is to say that I'm not the one being infringed upon...as far as I know. I'm just the one getting all damaged by various degrees of libel. I'll explain....
Our story begins back in...erm...I guess this kinda depends on when I wanna start on it. Potentially, it begins in 1990 or so, when a few of us got together to discuss the idea of making various TShirts and things. Which was hardly an innovative aspiration, I'll grant. But it was measurably better an activity at three in the morning than watching infomercials for Kevin Trudeau's amazing ability to rip off Harry Lorayne's
How to Pretend to Develop a Photographic Memory without Altering Your Entire Genome package. As a side note, I never bought the thing, although I did happen across a copy of Lorayne's book in my basement a few weeks later and read through it, inadvertently memorising the damned thing, already being neurologically eidetic. But that's just me.
So, anyway: about fifteen years ago, we're sitting there, ignoring Trudeau's latest scam, pondering the wonderful world of novelty TShirt production. Curiously, it went nowhere. For a while.
A few years later--probably around 1994--the subject came up again. This time involving mostly other people. Except for me. I was there. That's how I know about it, see. This time, I'm talking to Corey about all sorts of cool stuff we could be doing if only we weren't so damned lazy and broke and longhaired and so on. The ultimate end of the idea was founding what we thought we'd call JamesTaylor Productions, using our surnames. And also using
Productions. Since neither of us was named
Productions. We'd have to find someone Italian and prone to typos to get that part into the name.
Right. So. It's 1994. We're gonna go ahead and set up JTP and make things like shirts and films and music and...okay: we're gonna talk about it a lot while drinking too much coffee. Same basic result, minus any actual, like, income. Whatever.
1999. Corey's other little project gets grabbed up by Roadrunner Records. You may know it as
SlipKnot. I go off and do kooky stuff like
News of the Stoopid instead.
2001. In one of those rare instants at which neither Corey nor I are insurmountably busy, we get together long enough to pitch JTP at each other again. Why not? It's not like startup capital is an issue anymore. We jump into it, printing up a smallish product mix of shirts just to kinda test the market.
11th September 2001. The market follows a Boeing 767 into hell. Particularly insofar as the Irksome and Potentially Fucking Illegal Shit on TShirts Market is concerned. Corey pulls out and sticks to the more wholesome activity of screaming about chicks trapped in graves at the maggots.
I being more provocative than wise elect to stick with the plan. Coincidentally, I also happen across a netbased outsource service at CafePress.com, wherein one can have various things jammed onto shirts and coffeemugs and mousepads and things--essentially precisely what woulda helped out immensely back in the nineties, when no one had any damned money. Still: I'll take it. In fact: I did.
Enter another Coffeedrinker of America. Skip Johnson. Well, not really. He'd been there since about 1995, treating his someday comics career about the same way the rest of us were treating whatever in hell we never did either. However, Skip utterly rocks with a pen. Particularly in doing caricatures and things. Also, Skip is every bit as maladjusted to the planet as Corey and I are. We all get on famously. Skip linedraws out a number of really fucked up kids. The basic cast of
Predacious Moments.
Not to spoil any surprises here, but we put them on shirts and coffeemugs and mousepads and things. Because, well, we can.
2002. I get a thrilling EMail from the Copyright Alert Department of CafePress.com, letting me know that...I'll just post it here....
