Cheesed Off
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Local underground cartoonist Stuart Helm picked up the phone one day last winter and found a Kraft Foods attorney on the line. “I’m an admirer of your work,” the lawyer said, “but we think you should change your professional name.” It wasn’t “Helm” that had Kraft curdling; it was the cartoonist’s alias, King VelVeeda, a nickname he’s used as his signature on artwork for 13 years and on his Web sites, cheesygraphics.com and courtofporn.com, for about 3. The lawyer said consumers looking for Kraft on the Web were confusing VelVeeda with their 80-year-old trademark processed cheese loaf, Velveeta, and zooming to a site way more cheesy than they had in mind–a place of “pornography, bestiality, and negative attitudes toward women.” Helm admits his skull-head king offers “lowbrow entertainment” but maintains he’s harmless. Besides, he says, the claim that people are stumbling onto VelVeeda while hunting for Kraft is bogus. He respectfully declined Kraft’s request, and in March the company filed suit against him in federal court for trademark dilution. Kraft, which is part of the Philip Morris “family” and last year had revenues of $34 billion, charges that Helm’s “frequent use of words evocative of cheese products” in conjunction with his “unsavory” content tarnishes its trademarks and does it “irreparable harm.”
Flying High
