The man charged over the Madeleine Pulver collar bomb hoax now faces a fresh legal battle – in the form of an opportunistic law suit brought by the Essendon Bombers AFL club.
Essendon CEO Ian Robson said the club would seek legal help to avoid what he believed was a breach of intellectual property by Paul Douglas Peters, the man accused of strapping a bomb to the Mosman school girl in an alleged extortion attempt. The investment banker was arrested in Kentucky earlier this week and faced its district court yesterday.
Robson said the Essendon club was “fiercely protective of its brand” and that Peters’ use of a bomb was a breach of everything the Melbourne-based AFL team stood for.
“That bomb – it’s a trademarked Essendon emblem. We don’t want anyone using bombs because that’s basically what we stand for, it’s our club logo… we’re going to take a hard-line with this,” he said.
“I can understand why somebody would look at our model and say ‘Hey, we’d like to be able to replicate that’, but as I say, the lawyers will deal with it and ensure we can move forward and be very proud of who we are’ . We’ve got enormous brand equity as a football club around Australia, and we don’t want to lose that.”
Robson shrugged off the idea that this was yet another heavy-handed business decision by an AFL club, part of a code desperate to eliminate all competition in a bid to achieve 100% market share. He also quashed suggestions from this reporter that the Mosman incident had absolutely nothing to do with the present Essendon logo, which features the image of a WWII fighter plane as opposed to a small, suspicious looking – but ultimately fake – collar bomb device.
“Peters isn’t a Bomber. A real Bomber is someone like Mark McVeigh, Matthew Lloyd, Kevin Sheedy, ya know?”
Robson’s words come on the back of Essendon’s claim that the imminent NRL franchise, Brisbane Bombers, had stolen the name, colours, logos and general branding of the 130-year-old AFL club.
Meanwhile, ThePublicApology understands the AFL powerhouse has hired a throng of legal experts to commence litigation against all roadside bomb exponents in Afghanistan, as well as a suit against the Taliban, in a bid to retain sole ownership of the “Bomber” brand.
“We are the Bombers! No one else can steal our identity and expect to get away with it without us kicking up a massive fucking storm,” he added, spittle spraying from his livid lips.
By Dave Edwards
The AFL would bring a lawsuit against an 8 year old with leukemia wearing a knitted South Sydney scarf.
Explosive journolism….boom tish….hey?hey?……… ergh