It’s not every day that the public gets to see how powerful a corporation can be when it decides to flex its muscles, but when it does happen, it can be pretty incredible. Earlier today, Spalding went on the offensive and publicly warned Tropicana to never breed their oranges even close to the size of basketballs.
Wow. It looks like Spalding is NOT fucking around.
Spalding has been a basketball-manufacturing juggernaut for decades, and they are being very protective of their turf. In the cease and desist letter that the basketball-making staple sent to the citrus retailer this morning, they made their message loud and clear:
“Tropicana, you are hereby warned to never grow your oranges even close to the size of our basketballs. While your oranges are fine at their current size, any orange bred to be even close to the dimensions of a basketball will be an infringement on our intellectual property. Our lawyers are more than willing and capable of pursuing legal action if this demand is not fully adhered to.”
Spalding, coming out swinging! There’s something pretty amazing about seeing a titan of the corporate world dish out this type of shade to keep other companies in check. The cease and desist letter continues with some more detail, pretty much establishing this as grade-A ownage:
“To reiterate, the current size of Tropicana’s oranges is well within legal bounds. It is only in the case that Tropicana’s oranges grow much larger and approach even the most general size of a basketball that there will be legal retaliation. Were it the case that Tropicana’s fruit changed color, be it to red or green, before being bred the size of a basketball, we would be totally fine with that. Or, if the oranges were to be grown much, much larger than a basketball, around three or four times bigger, Spalding would also take no issue.”
“And, just in case you are unaware, Tropicana,” the statement concludes, “we only manufacture our mini-basketballs that are roughly the size of large oranges to fuck with you, because we know you dickless little shits don’t have the cojones to do anything about it.”
Uh, yeah. It looks like Spalding just totally posterized Tropicana on this one.
Tropicana has yet to respond to the bold move from Spalding, and if they’re in as much awe as we are, they probably won’t have much to say. For those taking notes out there, this is how the masters in business get ahead.
Where you at, Tropicana??
