(Image source: Facebook)
The Bernie Sanders campaign is now being accused of suppression for issuing a cease and desist letter to Liberty Maniacs, an “independent brand” that sells political satire apparel and merchandise, after the retailer began selling merchandise showing Sanders with communist dictators.
In the cease and desist letter sent on April 14, Sanders campaign lawyer Claire Hawkins demanded Liberty Maniac’s Daniel McCall stop selling and “destroy and/or take offline” items that use Sanders’ “Official Logos” within five days.
The apparently offensive “Bernie Is My Comrade” merchandise shows Sanders stylized as a communist leader alongside Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.
The word “Bernie” appears to be similar to the Sanders’ 2016 “Bernie” logo, but the “i” is modeled after the communist red star.
The description for the shirt reads, “This shirt includes a pantheon of socialist paladins just to confuse, fascinate, and cause the finger-wagging, nitpicking partisan to hilariously instruct upon the proper definition of socialism while everyone within a five foot radius rolls their eyes in aversion.”
McCall says the Sanders campaign is trying to “suppress” his parody.
While the Sanders campaign argues the parody of Sanders’ logo violates the Lanham Act and U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 501), McCall told Reason he believes the First Amendment protects his parody.
In response to the copyright claim, McCall’s lawyer, Paul Alan Levy of the Public Citizen Litigation Group argues, “Bernie Sanders should be ashamed of your trademark bullying on his behalf,” adding that the campaign's accusation is "absurd."
"You cannot use trademark theories to silence members of the American public who disagree with your client’s views and oppose his candidacy," Levy continued, adding, "[t]hey can hardly express their views in that respect without identifying the candidacy about which they wish to speak."
This is not the first time McCall’s parodies have been the subject of trademark claims. Hillary Clinton’s Ready For Hillary PAC also allegedly tried to silence McCall’s work with trademark claims.