Best e-mail complaint EVER!

Sometimes you can find some really strange people making odd presumptions about their company, space and what they think the Internet can do for them... and then there is this guy who sent Jonah Falcon an e-mail today:

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Dear Mr. Falcon:

I just ran across your article entitled RUMORS3 Sony’s Last Console, posted October 25, 2008, http://www.gamestooge.com/2008/10/25/rumor-ps3-sonys-last-console/, and I would like to raise an issue that is of concern to Selling Power magazine, which is the use of our trademark.

The word “Selling Power” is sometimes erroneously used as a synonym for sales effectiveness. For example you wrote: “Between less than stellar sales figures, extremely costly research and development, and the cost of production, the PS3’s only saving grace for Sony, at the moment, is the PS2’s strong selling power for the entire PlayStation brand.” We do not condone such uses of our trademark.

As a practical matter, when you describe sales effectiveness, there are a wide range of terms available such as: sales excellence, sales savvy, sales mastery, sales acumen, sales efficiency, and many more.

The reason for this letter is to educate writers like yourself that we want to protect our trademark, since we don’t want to risk Selling Power being declared by the courts a generic word. Therefore we ask you not to use Selling Power as a phrase since it is our legal trademark.

We would like to receive a written acknowledgment of this letter stating that you will in the future identify Selling Power as a trademark if you should write about our magazine, and not use Selling Power as a phrase. If we do not hear from you, we will need to take further action.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

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Seriously? For real? You kidding me? Either they think they can brute force the entire internet into not using their companies name in "common speech" because it's their name or they're just looking for conflict. If they really believe this is going to work I feel sad for them.

Anyway, my latest drinking podcast video: