Women’s Wear Daily
The New York Times has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Arianna Huffington, saying her new Parentlode blog is a rip-off of the newspaper’s Motherlode site. “While we are flattered by your focus on our blog and your apparent fondness for its name, we obviously cannot permit you to adopt a name whose sole purpose is to create an association in the minds of readers with our ‘Motherlode’ blog,” the paper tells Huffington, who recently hired Motherlode blogger Lisa Belkin away from the Times to write HuffPo’s Parentlode blog. “This is a transparent attempt to capitalize on the fame and reputation of the original nytimes.com blog, and constitutes an obvious infringement of The Times’ rights under U.S. Trademark law.”
Belkin tells John Koblin:
What it is that I do now is why the Huffington Post exists — the constant interaction with readers, the feedback. It’s not central to what the Times does. It shouldn’t be. That’s not why the Times exists. But since I love doing it, I’m going to have an adventure at the place that was designed to do it.
The Times says if it hasn’t “received a response to these demands within three days of receipt of this letter, we will have no choice but to pursue all available legal remedies.”
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