I must have missed this in my last visit to the greeting card section at Wal-Mart. Maybe that’s because it’s on the way to the aisle where they keep the gourmet chocolate. Who knows. Anyway, it seem that Hallmark has a new line of card that parody the celebrity of certain famous people, including Paris Hilton. Well, I guess Paris wasn’t too happy about a greeting card with her image on it. I think her image has been in a lot more places, but whatever.
According to the lawsuit filed Thursday, the card is titled “Paris’s First Day as a Waitress” and shows a photo of Hilton’s face on a cartoon of a waitress serving a plate of food to a patron. In a dialogue bubble she says, “Don’t touch that, it’s hot.” The customer cartoon asks, “What’s hot?” She answers, “That’s hot.”
The suit says Hilton owns the trademark “That’s hot,” which was registered on Feb. 13, 2007.
First of all, how can she register “That’s hot” as a trademark? I mean c’mon! Plus we get this little snippet which describes the complaints in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims commercial appropriation of identity, invasion of privacy, misappropriation of publicity, false representation that Hilton endorses the product, and infringement of a federally registered trademark. The damages would be based on profits from the $2.49 cards, said Hilton attorney Brent Blakely.
Invasion of privacy? In the way she has lived her life and allowed people into her most intimate moments, does she really have any “privacy” left? Besides, I don’t really understand how this is an invasion privacy. Of course I’m not a lawyer….
Yahoo also has a copy of the card you can view it here.
Now my question is doesn’t this really count as parody? I’d love to hear some input on what you think.
amazingly dumb…and it seems to me that our court system itself is the parody these days
I like the mis-spelling at the end of the first paragraph.
Thanks Bob. I fixed it.
Nothing to see here people, just a little Freudian slip.
Move along…