A blogger friend of mine just received a letter from Jennifer Daniel Collins, an attorney at Faegre & Benson that represents The National Pork Board. It stated, for the most part, that use of the phrase “the other white milk” violates their trademark on the phrase “the other white meat.”

Jennifer Laycock is the Editor of Search Engine Guide, an educational web site aimed at translating the search marketing world into something that small business owners can understand. A former search marketing consultant and in-house trainer, Jennifer�s clients have included companies like Verizon and Highlights for Children. Her primary clients now are a little girl named Elnora and a little boy named Emmitt.

Jennifer started the lactivist site and blog to support “nursing moms by promoting issues like breastfeeding in public, milk bank donation and child led weaning…the blog is the companion to “The Lactivist” store on Cafe Press which aims to educate people about breastfeeding through humor.

From what I’ve been told, the selling of the tshirt in question is being done for non-profit purposes. So why would the National Pork Board have a beef with this blogger? I just don’t get it. I understand that they want to protect their trademark, but seriously…do they really think a blogger selling a tshirt online is a threat?

Here’s a link to the blog post here that explains it all. Jennifer Laycock is a fellow search marketer.

This whole thing should be an interesting experiment: to see if the blogging community, as well as the social media and social networking can help get the word out about how the National Pork Board is literally trying to stomp all over one innocent blogger.

Shoemoney is also talking about the issue as well. Take a look at what Jeremy has to say, he has some contact names, phone numbers, and email addresses of people to contact at the National Pork Board.

Breastfeeding 123 is also talking about it now. Check out what Breastfeeding 123 has to say.

I just spoke to Jennifer Laycock and here’s what she had to say about the site and the project’s “non-profit” and profit status, and where the money for the project is going:

The site isn’t non-profit, but it does raise funds for a non-profit…typically, 10% of funds go to the milk bank, but every now and then I do a fundraising. In Dec/Jan all profits went to the milk bank.

In any case, we’re not exactly talking about a for-profit venture here, folks.

Looks like a lot more people are getting into the act, talking about this issue. Here are some more links to articles/posts/whatever:
Netscape
The Small Business Ideas forum.
Marketing Pilgrim
Traffick
Search Engine Land
Search Engine Guide
The Feeding Choices Board at BabyCenter
Cameron Olthuis - Save a Pig, Boycott Pork

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