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Battitude by Corporate Lawyers

In our dealings with VeRO takedowns and the like, we have experienced a lot of "bad attitude" by corporate lawyers concerning the issues of trademark infringement and copyright infringement. This "battitude" gets transmitted to their "underlings" at the law firm as well as to the people at the companies represented. Corporate lawyers are elitists anyway. It starts with their offices that take up large chucnks of real estate and expensive furniture and continues to weekly golf games, expensive suits, and a general attitude of superiority: Dig me, I'm smart, I'm successful, I have things you can't afford, I'm a big-shot lawyer. What they fail to understand is reality. They are in those large corporate offices, breathing-in the thin atmosphere, generating the many billable hours that pay for the fancy digs, their cars, their house, and their vacations. They don't believe, or care about, the public opinion surveys on popularity that rank lawyers below Attila The Hun and just above Hitler and Stalin. One problem we see is that lawyers discipline lawyers, therefore, few lawyers ever “break” the rules, officially. But, they break the rules all the time. Or, at least, the spirit of the rules. The rules for lawyers, written by lawyers, give the impression lawyers are trying to police their ranks. that's isn't true. While the rules do set forth certain no-nos, like stealing a client's money or sleeping with a client, these same rules (sometimes jokingly called "ethics" by lawyers) create loopholes big enough to drive a limo through. The Code of Professional Ethics For Lawyers (Yes, Virginia, lawyers have a Code of Ethics and it is not an oxymoron), states that a lawyer must zealously represent his client. Let us extrapolate that a little farther. Since the corporate client pays the bills, and a corporate lawyer wants that pay, when the corporate client wants to do something, say stop people from re-selling his product on eBay, do you really think the corporate lawyer is going to tell his client that federal regulations allow the people to re-sell the products? Of course not! What the lawyer will do is say, “Yowsah, Boss”, and shuffle off to compose some intimidating but legally flawed cease and desist letters figuring that few, if any, victims, ah we mean recipients, will fight back because of the cost and most don't really understand what in the hell was said in the letters. And they're correct. Few do fight back. Then, when contacted, these lowly corporate lawyers cop an attitude when asked to explain to the uninitiated eBay seller as to th finer points of trademark law and copyright law. They dismiss the inquiry as a waste of their time, forgetting that they have attended years of school to learn the laws while the eBay seller has not. While there are a fair number of eBay sellers who are infringing, many are small at-home businesses who have no clue what they may have dome wrong. The corporate lawyer has the time to potentially ruin someone's small business but not the time to give them a reasonable explanation why. But, the corporate lawyers can't take the time to explain something after they have taken the time to potentially destroy a small business and possibly devastate someone because these people are beneath them. As far as we're concerned, those corporate lawyers can take their battitude and put it where the sun don't shine.