‘Buy Nothing’ Was Their Everything. Then Came the Trademark Troubles.; The New York Times via The Seattle Times, November 16, 2025

 Emma Goldberg, The New York Times via The Seattle Times; ‘Buy Nothing’ Was Their Everything. Then Came the Trademark Troubles.

"“The decision to incorporate the Buy Nothing Project as a public benefit corporation came after years of rapid, grassroots growth,” Liesl Clark, the CEO of Buy Nothing, wrote in an email. “It became clear that to sustain this work, protect the integrity of the mission and continue to grow responsibly, we needed a formal structure.” 

Plenty of members of the local groups feel disgruntled about these top-down rules. But at the moment, many are particularly galled at the timing of the recent page takedowns.

“It’s anti the ethos of the whole idea of Buy Nothing to go around and start enforcing a trademark while we’re in the middle of a SNAP crisis,” said Aidan Grimshaw, one of the administrators of a San Francisco group that used the Buy Nothing name, referring to the federal government’s largest food-assistance program. “It feels like a sign of the times.” 

On Buy Nothing’s blog, the organization said that reviews of unregistered pages happen intermittently, unrelated to the news. “We understand that some removals have coincided with the rollback to federal SNAP benefits,” the statement read. “Timing of group removals is outside of our control, and no unregistered groups have been reported since the rollback began.” 

Clark, a filmmaker, and Rebecca Rockefeller, who had bounced between gigs and at points lived on food stamps, started the first Buy Nothing group in 2013. They were partly inspired by the sort of gifting economies that Clark saw while filming a documentary in the Himalayas. What began as a small Facebook group in Bainbridge Island, Washington, took off quickly, leading eventually to thousands more groups with millions of members. Participation in the groups ballooned during the pandemic, when people were confined to their homes and hungry for connection. In 2021, the two founders incorporated it as a public benefit corporation. 

Some members of the local groups complained that the creation of a new structure and new rules violated the loose and free spirit of the community. The administrators who run the San Francisco page were incensed when they received an email from Facebook on Oct. 30 informing them of their trademark infringement."

Icelandic Fishing Giant Wins Copyright Case Against Artist; artnet, November 14, 2024

Jo Lawson-Tancred , artnet; Icelandic Fishing Giant Wins Copyright Case Against Artist

"The work by the artist known as Odee had publicly impersonated Iceland’s biggest fishing company Samherji, issuing a fake apology for its role in the so-called “fishrot” corruption scandal of 2019. In his ruling, the judge described the artwork as “an instrument of fraud, copyright infringement, and malicious falsehood.”

The case never went to trial but the artist said he plans to appeal the judgement. His defenders have argued that any punitive action taken against him could result in a “chilling effect” that discourages artist’s from daring to critique big corporations for fear of legal action.

Samherji sued Odee, the moniker for 41-year-old Icelandic artist Oddur Fridriksson, over We’re Sorry (2023), for which Odee created the website samherji.co.uk, imitating the company’s brand identity. On this platform, he issued the statement: “Samherji Apologizes, Pledges Restitution and Cooperation with Authorities.”

In Samherji’s complaint filed in London’s high court, it accused Odee of trademark infringement and malicious falsehood. The company’s lawyers applied for a summary judgement to avoid a trial."