Diary of a Wolfeman

Yahoo! News reports via the AP that a store owner in St. Helens, OR was recently called upon to remove a Rubik’s cube knockoff from her shelves by a pair of agents from the Homeland Security Office.

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents went to Pufferbelly based on a trademark infringement complaint filed in the agency’s intellectual property rights center in Washington, D.C.

“One of the things that our agency’s responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation’s financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications,” she said.

The copyright of the Rubik’s Cube, however, has expired, so the claim is false. As a matter of fact, items such as these have been in the market for several years now, so I’m wondering why the HS Office decided they needed to flex their muscles now. One wonders if this isn’t merely the first step in a broader campaign of control.

Your government needs to be hit upside the head with a cluebat, folks. Write your Representatives today and tell them you won’t stand for this kind of bullshit.