This Ain’t No Boston Tea Party
February 7th, 2006 | View Comments
Background info: 1, 2, 3, and 4
The Los Angeles Times printed a story about the Stitch and/&/’n Bitch controversy today. I am displeased with the article, finding it to be biased towards Voldemort sewing company. It begins with the title:
She’s Saying: Don’t Thread on Me; Owner of a New York firm has a knit to pick with stitching groups she says are using a name she trademarked
If you’ve had an American History survey course, you should recognize that “Don’t Thread on Me” is a play on “Don’t Tread on Me,” a Revolutionary War symbol of American independence. Right off the bat, the writer associates Voldemort with the image of spirited Americans fighting for their rights.
Might I suggest that it would have been more appropriate to use a play on “Let them eat cake!“? (Let them eat rage? Let them knit to gauge?)
Further on down, we get this:
A small New York company called Sew Fast Sew Easy has launched a trademark battle against Stitch ‘N Bitch circles across the country. Sew Fast owner Elissa Meyrich, who claims to have started the first such group in New York in 1997, says the others are infringing on her trademark for an online message board that incorporates the name.
“Here I am minding my own business, and then it becomes obvious to me that I have to be vigilant about what is mine and belongs to me,” Meyrich said in a phone interview from New York City. “People, you can copy things all the time, but don’t copy my trademarks.”
Where to begin.
First, the writer completely fails to mention that Sew Fast/Sew Easy (SFSE), aka Voldemort, has registered “Stitch and Bitch Cafe”, not “Stitch ‘N Bitch”, leaving readers with the mistaken impression that SFSE has an established right to “Stitch ‘N Bitch”.
In fact, whether SFSE can stand on that particular piece of legal ground is still an open question, pending the results of the cancellation proceedings for the “Stitch and Bitch Cafe” mark and their June 2005 application for “Stitch and Bitch”, which received an initial refusal from the trademark examiner at the end of December.
Second, a key component of maintaining trademark rights is aggressively policing the mark against unlicensed use, lest you lose your rights to the mark. In some countries, what we in the US know generically as “aspirin” is actually Aspirin-brand pain reliever; the makers of aspirin lost trademark status here. Along similar lines, the makers of Xerox-brand copiers and Kleenex-brand facial tissues have spent copious (heh) amounts of money trying to prevent their rights from lapsing.
The “Stitch and Bitch Cafe” trademark has been on the books since 2001, and yet SFSE waited until mid-2005, after three books (two of which landed on the New York Times bestseller lists) bearing the “Stitch ‘N Bitch” name were published and a fourth announced, to take any sort of action. One might suggest to Meyrich that next time she research what trademark ownership entails before registering a mark.
Third, as far as I know they still haven’t gone after the most prominent users of “Stitch ‘N Bitch” on the internet. SFSE has sent cease-and-desist letters to knitting groups via CafePress and Yahoo, but the flagship forum, Debbie Stoller’s Virtual Stitch ‘N Bitch is still standing, as is stitchnbitch.org.
I don’t know if this is because they felt that shutting down the groups on CafePress and Yahoo was aggressive enough or because they don’t have the legal cajones to actually file infringement suits, rather than operating through intermediaries who will not bother to evaluate the merits of their claim.
Fourth, there appears to be an inconsistency between Meyrich’s 1997 claim as reported here and as posted on SFSE’s web site, and the November 1998 date of first use noted on the trademark registration. Perhaps this is due to a subtlety of trademark law that I am not aware of, or perhaps this is because Meyrich cannot make up her mind as to when she supposedly invented the concept.
Fifth, there are documented references to “stitch and bitch” groups that pre-date 1997. More on that later.
Sixth, I suppose I should stop referring to Meyrich and SFSE collectively as “Voldemort” now that I’ve blatantly identified them on this site (though dedicated readers will have found it out long ago). Which is just as well, because I feel that they don’t possess the pure, unadulterated evil of the character Voldemort; they are more like Dolores Umbridge–respectable intentions, but horribly misguided actions and lacking the faintest idea of how to form good public relations.
Moving on…
The knitters insist that Meyrich neither founded the movement nor owns the name, which some say dates to the 1920s.
And…that’s it. The reader is left to take the knitters’ word for it. There is no mention of the documented references to “stitch and bitch” groups that can be found online that date as far back as 1988–a decade before the date of first use on the trademark application.
I spent five minutes on Lexis Nexis and turned up around a dozen references to “stitch and bitch” groups published in the US, Canada, and Australia between 1988 and 1998. Stitch and bitch groups are mentioned in No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting by Anne Macdonald, published in 1988, and in Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver, published in 1990.
The LA Times itself published a story that quoted a quilter saying “We get together to stitch and bitch,” in 1991. And these are just references that can be found online; archives of items published before 1988 can be extremely difficult to find. Who knows what a rigorous search of old newspaper, magazine, and library archives would find?
Rebellious Stitchers are rallying around knitting guru Debbie Stoller, who in November began a legal battle to strip Meyrich of her trademark.
The phrasing chosen here–”Rebellious Stitchers”, “strip Meyrich”–portrays knitters and Stoller as aggressors. Why not use more neutral wording?
In Cleveland, through her Sew Fast Sew Easy boycott website, Becky Veverka is selling T-shirts, mugs, hats and even dog shirts with the slogan “Free to Stitch Free to Bitch.” A percentage of the proceeds goes to lawyers to fight Meyrich, she said. So far, the legal fund stands at $61.
Yes, Becky Veverka would be the webmistress of Free to Stitch, Free to Bitch and who says she did not give a formal phone interview.
First, the $61 reference is clearly a backhanded slap at the boycotters as it is a paltry sum for a legal fund. It neglects to mention that the primary goal of the shop was not to raise money, but publicity. The secondary goal was to raise money, but not necessarily to pay a lawyer. If the situation resolves itself without legal action from individual groups of knitters (as is likely to happen), the money will be donated to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
Second, the $61 reference is wrong. The shop page lists $181 in the fund as of January 20; Becky says that the fund currently has over $300 in it. That is still nowhere near enough for a lawyer, but it translates to a respectable movement of product from the boycott store.
At the current markup, $300 profit is equivalent to selling 110 women’s T-Shirts or 140 coffee mugs or 2000 2.25″ buttons sold in packs of 100. Not too bad, considering the niche audience and that the store has only been up for about three weeks.
Meyrich says she feels hurt by the heat she is taking from the knitting community.
“I’m a victim of some sad circumstances…. People are calling our phones and cursing at us, defacing our pictures, calling our employees names,” she said.
It takes a lot of nerve to say that, considering that one of her employees released a two-page public statement that defames Debbie Stoller (screenshots and annotation courtesy the girl from auntie). The statement was taken down, but Sew Fast/Sew Easy has yet to print a retraction or fire Gregory Garvin, “Marketing Manager”, so perhaps they don’t regret releasing it in the first place.
I’ve submitted a letter to the LA Times editor regarding this article. I’ll let you know if they publish it.
Yvonne posted this on February 7th, 2006 @ 8:34pm in Stitch & Bitch | Permalink to "This Ain’t No Boston Tea Party"
No Comments
There are no comments yet. Be the first to leave one!
Knitting, crocheting, and designing keep her sane in Houston, TX. 
E-mail Yvonne
celiviel
cogknition
yvonnekao
Subscribe
