Cool Kids cease & desist Teenage Cool Kids

This stuff always seems so pathetic, especially when it involves the 'big guns' (although The Cool Kids are completely unknown to me) trying to screw over a small band. Apparently The Cool Kids feel that Teenage Cool Kids are infringing on their name. They want all products sold under TCK's name to be returned and destroyed and if they carry on under the name it would be considered as "additional infringement, which may subject you to even greater personal liability including additional monetary damages and attorneys' fees".
Fair enough if they were operating under the same name but you have to be a fucking idiot if you consider this an issue. One quick search of amazon - of all places - would also alert you to the fact that 'cool kids' was hardly original back in 2005 (when the cool kids apparently formed). There was a glam band (Kix) in the 1980s that released an album called 'cool kids' and there were the Cool Kids of Death (formed 2001) that took their name from a Saint Etienne song. No doubt there are also families out there with the surname 'Cool' that have children, possibly nicknamed 'the cool kids' that maybe feel The Cool Kids are giving them a bad name. And there were always the cool kids in school...

There's even more of a shambles when it comes to the cease and desist order - the attorneys can't correctly spell their clients trademark, at one point calling them 'The Cook Kids'. Congratulations Stahl Cowen. I hope that's not common practice within the law fraternity.

Anyway, this is just another example of the bad side of the music industry and law enforcement. No one should be able to hold sole rights for two commonly used words.
It would be really interesting to see what evidence The Cool Kids and their lawyers have found to conclude that the Teenage Cool Kids name has caused an "erroneous impression that your products and services bearing the infringing name originate from, come from, or are otherwise associated with The Cool Kids".


That was a bit of a step away from normality on this blog but this news annoyed me, will be back to the same old again next post.

In the meantime, go and check out Old Weird America's huge 'Stackolee' collection.

Also, single tapes of the Ajilvsga Skull Bundle have just been made available in tiny quantities (20 each). Get 'em here.