[Infowarrior] - POTUS sends cease-and-desist to 17-year-old student over cat website

[Richard Forno]

Trump sends cease-and-desist to 17-year-old student over cat website

By Anne Lu @chelean on March 22 2017 8:18 PM

http://www.ibtimes.com.au/trump-sends-cease-desist-17-year-old-student-over-cat-website-1547832

US President Donald Trump is threatening to sue a 17-year-old girl for creating a cat website featuring his face. Lucy from San Francisco, California, created a site called TrumpScratch.com, wherein visitors get to scratch Trump’s face with cat claws to their satisfaction, but the American leader wasn’t having it.

The 17-year-old high school student was served with a cease and desist letter from the president’s general counsel in New York three weeks after her website went live. The letter began by calling Trump a “well-known businessman” and television star, probably referring to the former “The Apprentice” star’s days as a reality TV actor. “As I’m sure you’re aware, the Trump name is internationally known and famous,” the letter, confirmed by the Observer, reads.

Lucy, who has been applying for web development jobs, then changed the name of her website to KittenFeed.com on the advice of her family lawyer. That still did not appease Trump’s legal camp, though. The teenager said they were still after her.

It only took her three hours to code the website, a coding project that she could put on her resume. Although she called it a “fun, little” project, she had Trump’s face as target “out of principle.”

“I was going to just let this go, but I think it’s, pardon my French, f------ outrageous that the president of the United States has his team scouring the Internet for sites like mine to send out cease and desists and legal action claims if we shut down,” Lucy told the publication. “Meanwhile, he tweets about ‘The Apprentice’ ratings and sends out power-drunk tweets about phone tapping. HOW ABOUT BEING THE PRESIDENT?”

It was not clarified what demands Trump’s legal team wanted from her. Lucy still hasn’t responded to Trump after changing her website’s name. She and her lawyer are still waiting for Trump’s next move.

Lawsuits are the American president’s specialty. He had sued and had been sued thousands of times over the past three decades. In the data collated by USA Today last year, Trump and his businesses sued for branding and trademark cases, contract disputes, and employment cases among many others. They also faced lawsuits that range from labour and personal injury claims to government and taxes cases. Trump himself has also threatened to sue media outlets and individuals over the years for defamation.

Earlier this year, his wife, Melania, filed a US$150 million (AU$196 million) suit against UK paper the Daily Mail for publishing apparently damaging allegations. Her legal team argued that Melania had the “unique, once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity as a first lady of the US, which she could have used to garner multimillion-dollar business deals and endorsements, but that the newspaper has damaged it by publishing the unfounded allegations.