Monster Cable Products is a company which makes a brand of cables called Monster Cable. You’ve probably seen their products at big box retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City. Hell, you’ve probably gotten the hard-sell about them from a Best Buy salesman. And no wonder – the cables are a quality product, but are outrageously overpriced for what they are. The big box retailers make an obscene amount of profit from them, and thus will resort to scare tactics to sell them: “Oh yeah, those Sony HDTVs will explode on you if you don’t use a Monster brand cable!”
I personally hate Monster cables, and it’s not just because they have the nerve to sell a $2 cable for $150. No, I hate Monster because the company will seemingly sue anyone that uses the word “Monster” in their name. I could understand the legal action if a company was in the cable or electronics accessory business, but Monster Cable has threatened legal action against anyone with Monster in their name, such as:
Monster Garage (a car show on the Discovery Channel)
Monster Energy Drink
Snow Monsters (a children’s skiing group)
MonsterVintage (a small used clothing store)
Monsters, Inc., a Disney animated film
“Monsters of the Midway”, a nickname of the Chicago Bears that dates to the 1940s.
The “Monster seats” at Boston’s Fenway Park
Monster.com, an employment website
Monster Mini Golf
Look, I understand how trademarks work. You have to defend their use, or else you’d lose the rights to that trademark. That’s why the legal departments at Xerox and Kimberley-Clark send letters to DJs and TV reporters reminding them to use the terms “photocopy” and “tissue” instead of “Xerox” or “Kleenex”. But Monster is a company gone mad. And now you can do something about it! This post at Consumerist.com has contact links for Monster’s CEO where you can tell him to stop wasting his time (and taxpayer money in the court system) by ending Monster’s ridiculous trademark campaign!