The World According To Chris Brewer

From FOX News:

ATLANTA — A federal judge has sided with a Georgia man whose satirical Web site likens Wal-Mart to the Holocaust.

U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. in Atlanta rejected Wal-Mart’s claims that Charles Smith’s Web site and satirical products violated the company’s trademark. In an 87-page order, Batten said Smith’s products qualified as protected noncommercial speech because his goal was to criticize Wal-Mart, not to make a profit from his products.

The 50-year-old computer store owner from Conyers, Ga., said he was “elated” by the ruling in the two-year-old case.

“It’s great,” he said. “I’m relieved. Whenever you go into litigation against such a big company, you never know the outcome.”

He set up his Walocaust Web site, and later a Wal-Qaeda Web site, because he says Wal-Mart is “taking over the world.”

Wal-Qaeda. That’s awesome. Shame on you, Wal-Mart, for bullying some guy who created a site that really doesn’t even come close to infringing on copyright and actually posted a link to you.

Salon.com put it best:

Hey Wal-Mart, do you understand the legal definition of “trademark infringement”? For Smith to be violating your mark, consumers would need to be confused by the similarity of his logo to yours. Do you think that’s possible — that someone seeing a Walocaust or Wal-Qaeda logo might reasonably conclude that it’s an official Wal-Mart production? If so, you must have either a very low opinion of your customers, or of your brand. Not a good sign.

All in all, congrats to Mr. Smith for prevailing over Goliath in this case.

Now on a more personal level, I am dumbstruck by the number of Wal-Marts I see here in the Springfield, Missouri area. The city has 150,000 people and five Wal-Marts spread around the city, as seen on the Google Map below. (For comparison’s sake the surrounding 30-mile radius incorporates about 400,000 people and has 15 Wal-Marts.)

Here is a comparison that will leave your jaw dropped to the floor. Portland, Oregon, the major city that I lived near (to be more precise, I lived in a suburb of Portland called Hillsboro), boasts just under 500,000 people. (Hillsboro and Beaverton are included in the 30-mile radius that incorporates 2 million people, for comparison’s sake.)

Now look at THIS map.

Stunning, isn’t it? A metro area of 2 million people with seven Wal-Marts, and a large town with a metro area of 400,000 with fifteen. The outlying towns of Springfield — Nixa, Republic, Ozark, Monett, etc. all have populations of about 10,000 and all have their own SUPERCENTER. That blows my mind. A town of comparable size in the Northwest would be lucky to have a Fred Meyer.

I don’t understand it. Maybe it’s the geography, maybe it’s the economics but the disparity of Wal-Marts per capita between Portland and here is kinda shocking, to me at least.