I’m sure you’ve already heard about this item, where the creator of “The Oatmeal” (Matthew Inman) executed a wonderful, creative and philanthropic smackdown on a small-minded stereotype-producing lawyer that had originally been retained to represent the interests of someone who was not quite above board in his handling of Intellectual Property – most notably “The Oatmeal” content published without consent.
Check out the full story here (on Philip Defranco’s site – jump to 1:08 if you’re impatient) and the final result here. Basically Matthew took an attempt to abuse our sometimes sorry legal system to not only suppress his gripes about having his work used without his permission, but to also try to extort $20,000 from him on top of that. Then the representing lawyer went hog wild and tried to sue everyone and everything associated with the debacle.
Brilliant and creative people are always such a refreshing breath of fresh air. Especially when they put the smackdown on people who epitomize all that is wrong with an archaic and badly out of touch legal system.