Another day. Another adversarial letter from a lawyer representing a TM organization asking us to shut something down.
Ho-hum.
I redacted two posts, here and here, to attempt to meet the demands of Jim Nemmers, Esq., of Shuttleworth & Ingersoll, P.L.C., who claims to represent the Maharishi Foundation Ltd., England. He states that MFL owns the copyright to the email and the service marks and trademarks in two emails I posted.
(Interestingly, a little sweat applied to a Google search box reveals that MFL appears to be a nonprofit corporation dormant for 10 years — without assets, without any mention of intellectual property assets.)
I believe my original posts met the requirements for a Fair Use exception to copyright laws, being news, information, criticism, educational, and parodic, as well as being for a non-commercial purpose. In fact, I thought the full posts served the TM Org well by providing the entire context of their email so readers could make their own informed opinions about the material presented.
I've got to wonder why Jim and his client MFL are scared of us publishing their own, exact words in full context. Especially when these emails are typically accompanied by requests to share them with any interested parties.
This is a temporary response to Jim's demands, as I research with our advisers how copyright and intellectual property rights apply to this situation.
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