NYSE Tries to Body Slam TPM!

If you're a word editor you'll need to see this.

The New York Stock Exchange now claims that you give to get their permission (express or implicit) before you use images connected to the New York Stock Exchange.So if you get a wire photo of the trading floor and use it to exemplify a report on Wall Street, you're violating the NYSE's trademark because they've trademarked the trading floor itself.

We found this out yesterday when we got a terminate and desist letter from the NYSE based on an article published at TPM back in November.You can see the letter here.

TPM is delineated on Media and IP matters by extremely capable specialist outside counsel.And we've been advised that the NYSE's claims are idle and ridiculous on their face.But this is yet another case of how many large corporations have given way to IP-mania, trying to bully smaller companies into compliance with inane and legally specious claims of intellectual property rights.

Well, TPM's small but we have big teeth.And we don't like being pushed around.So we're again posting the same scene as an example for this post.But really, what's next?Mayor Bloomberg trademarks his front and the city newspapers have to get his license to print photos of him so not to contravene the Bloomberg face trademark?Or more likely, the Empire State building trademark's the see of the Empire State building and demands a fee or bars photographs of the New York skyline.

We're here in Chelsea at TPM HQ and the Nyse is merely a few dozen blocks away down in the financial district.But no matter what they have at us, we're hanging tough.

So in the feeling of the minute I suggest a contest.We recognize that NYSE now says you want their license to display photographs of the Change in the setting of news coverage.And if I understand their logic you'd actually take their license to establish a survey you drew of the Central floor.

So here's the contest, what do you think NYSE's next preposterous claim of intellectual property rights will be?Can you say the words 'New York Stock Exchange' without their permission?Can you do a job drawing of the frontage of the change without running it by the NYSE's lawyers?

You assure us!We'll write the best entries.Glory abounding for the best contest entry.