A cute little device I’ve almost purchased several times in the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge is Cajun in Your Pocket, a hand-held toy. It has six buttons that, when pushed, play six different spoken phrases, such as “We gon pass a good time, yeah, cher,” “You gotta suck da head on dem der crawfish,” and, my favorite, “OO, I Love You Like a Pig Loves Corn” (WAV file similar to device sounds). But the wife couldn’t stand my juvenile cackling as I hit the buttons in frenzied, monomaniacal succession, so, alas, I don’t own one of those fine toys. Anyway, it’s the subject of a recent copyright lawsuit. The owner “obtained registered copyrights to protect the “sound recordings” and word arrangements of certain Cajun sayings”.
“A rap album distributed by defendants included the exact word arrangement used in two of plaintiff’s copyrighted sayings. The court concluded that the words and phrases at issue in this case were common Cajun phrases not subject to copyright protection, and therefore affirmed the judgment in favor of defendants.”
Aww, poor little Cajun!
[Courtesy my Yankee friend Tony Diehl.]
3:31 pm on August 28, 2003
