Last week Best Buy sent Newegg (an online electronics retailer) a Cease and Desist letter for shared similarities between Newegg’s "Geek On" advertising campaign and Best Buy’s "Geek Squad" along with a Newegg commercial that seemed to depict and insult the “good-will” that Best Buy has established.

The shirt is Newegg. The box in the lower right is Best Buy.

Best Buy also complains that Newegg is also violating its trademarks because of the following commercial, which points out that some business establishments have poor customer service.

The original version of the commercial can be seen below.

Best Buy takes offense at all this and claims that it is trademark infringement:

The fake Best Buy employee is depicted as being slovenly and uninformed about computer products, in contrast to your employees who are portrayed as "experts."

Your misuse of our valuable trademarks and your negative portrayal of our employees violate our trademark rights and misleads consumers about our services, in violation of federal and state law. While we welcome fair competition, we cannot tolerate unfair competition that disparages our employees, confuses customers and damages our valuable trademarks and the goodwill associated with those marks. We take great pride in our employees and the high quality of customer service they offer and find your company's focus on our employees in this advertising campaign to be particularly offensive.

Newegg has responded to Best Buy and also shared their response on the NewEgg Facebook page.

The response comes in the form of another letter, posted to the Newegg Facebook page as a note.

This makes one wonder if this amounts to trademark bullying. Also it reminds me of the Pusser's Rum v. Painkiller dispute, which resulted in a PR nightmare for Pusser's.

Well, let’s look at Best Buy’s allegations and the response from Newegg. Best Buy complains that Newegg’s "Geek On" marketing campaign with the "O" in "On" made to look like a "power on" button is infringingly similar to the Best Buy trademark “Geek Squad.” Remember, that for this to be trademark infringement Newegg’s use must cause or be likely to cause confusion in the marketplace. Consequently, to me these do not appear so similar as to constitute infringement.

Secondly, as their response states, Newegg disagrees with Best Buy’s assessment of the commercial, however, stating that in an effort to not offend Best Buy or its employees, they are adding a disclaimer (See below), which states, in part, that the purpose of the commercial is to parody and draw attention to any business establishment that provide poor customer service.

The modified version of the Newegg commercial is directly below.

In many ways it appears that Best Buy’s cease and desist will have the exact opposite effect of what Best Buy wanted (Much like in the Pusser's case). First, it's driven a substantial amount of attention to Newegg's commercial, but more importantly, it's made Newegg supporters, who are generally very tech savvy, really dislike Best Buy. Newegg had posted the Cease and desist letter on its Facebook page, and the response are almost universally anti-Best Buy.

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