WSJ to NYT on IP Claim: We Thought You Had Better Things to Worry About
The Wall Street Journal has sent a flippant reply to the New York Times over its claim that the Journal stole the Times’ tagline, “Not Just Wall Street. Every Street.”
The Times had sent the Wall Street Journal a cease-and-desist letter after the Dow Jones publication used the tagline to promote its new section covering New York-area news, the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) reported last week. The letter by Times Co. lawyer Richard Samson said the Times owns the trademark rights in the slogan and the Wall Street Journal used it in a “brazen appropriation of our intellectual property rights.”
Jennifer Jehn, the senior vice president of marketing for the Wall Street Journal, sent a “cheeky response,” according to paidContent.org. Her letter begins this way: “We half-expected to hear from you. The other half thought you might have better things to worry about.”
Jehn tells the Times not to be too concerned, since the WSJ didn’t intend to run the ad for long. She doesn’t appear to be concerned, either. “Our lawyers tell us that we were within our rights to use the tagline to compare our two offerings,” she writes.
A Times spokesperson told paidContent that it doesn’t plan to file suit, since the Wall Street Journal campaign appears to be over.
