Jones Day has been publicly ridiculed after it threatened a blogger who used its logo.

An anonymous critic set up www.kevynorr.com to mock former Jones Day bankruptcy partner Kevyn Orr. Orr was appointed as the Emergency Manager of Detroit after the city went bust last year. The site depicts Kev pulling off his face to reveal that he is, in fact, a lizard and generally suggests that he does not have the city's best interests at heart. It also gives Jones Day a kicking on the basis that Orr instructed the firm to advise on the city's financial restructuring.

Jones Day seems to have been most upset by the appearance of its logo beneath the tagline, "Detroit's Economic Coup D'Etat has been brought to you by". In response Jones Day litigation partner Robert Ducatman fired off the requisite thundering letter ordering the website to remove the logo immediately. His opening line is a passive-aggressive treat: "I write on behalf of Jones Day, a law firm with over 2500 lawyers in offices on five continents". OooOO. Ducatman signs off with the ominous promise, "Your conduct will be closely monitored".

Instead of fleeing to Antarctica or Africa to avoid thousands of closely-monitoring Jones Day lawyers, the blogger published the letter and for good measure added another Jones Day logo, now with extra lizard.

   
"We didn't approve this branding, did we?"


The resulting publicity attracted the support of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group which supports free speech on the internet. Its lawyers responded to Jones Day arguing that the "obvious parody" of corporate sponsorship constitutes fair use, since no one could reasonably think that the firm would sponsor an economic coup. It asked Jones Day to stop trying to discover the blogger's identity and accused the firm of making "a calculated attempt to confuse and intimidate a person you expected to be unfamiliar with the law".

A spokesman for Jones Day failed to comment on whether breaking a butterfly on a wheel has blown up in its face.
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