Zazzle

Pi trademark incident

In May 2014, Zazzle removed thousands of products containing the Greek letter pi (π) from being offered for sale on its website.[10] This was done in response to a cease-and-desist letter sent on behalf of Brooklyn-based artist Paul Ingrisano, who holds the trademark (U.S. Reg. No. 4473631) for the symbol 'π.' (pi followed by a period).[11] Zazzle's content management team initially defended its ban on Zazzle's user forums, despite complaints from Zazzle sellers that Ingrisano's specific trademark did not appear to apply to their designs.[12] Following the backlash from users, however, Zazzle reversed course on May 30 and began restoring products featuring the letter pi that had been initially removed.[10]

Font lawsuit

In August 2022, graphic designer Nicky Laatz sued Zazzle, saying that the company had secretly purchased a one-user license for her trademarked and copyright-protected fonts and then made them available to all of its hundreds of thousands of designers and tens of millions of users, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of profits for Zazzle from products that incorporated her fonts.[13][14] The lawsuit claims that Zazzle had recommended her font as their second most popular font, and that five of Zazzle's twelve most-popular business cards, as well as several of its most-popular wedding invitations used her fonts.[15][16][17]

Zazzle responded by stating that Zazzle had asked to purchase a server license from Laatz, but that Laatz never responded. Zazzle responded in court by asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed based on the fact that fonts cannot be copyrighted in the US. Software to create fonts can be copyrighted, and Laatz said that she hand-coded designs in the font-creation software, but Zazzle's lawyers contend that she deceived the copyright office about this and created the font with a font program.