how not to make friends and influence people

One of my personal paradoxes is that I am an honors graduate from Georgetown Law School and I think most  lawyers are bottom-dwelling parasites (not you of course).

Here is Exhibit A:  Received a cease and desist letter from a nest of parasites called “Kessler International.”

My crime?  Back in November, I posted a one sentence shout-out to a site that was collecting anecdotes about voter fraud.

Well the site to which I linked is/was called VoterStory, but in my never-ending effort to clever up our blog entries, I used the title “Fraudbusters 2.0.”

This has evidently caused massive sphincter clench among the good people at Kessler, who claim ownership of the term “Fraudbusters.”  They are demanding that I sign a cease and desist letter agreeing never to use the term “Fraudbusters” except as it relates to these Kessler people.

Please note that the offending blog entry was back in November, and lasted maybe 3 nanoseconds in terms of being anything folks would read.  Kessler seems not to have bothered to have purchased any versions of Fraudbusters as a URL.   I have never heard of Kessler (apparently they are “forensic accountants” — a head scratcher of a term).

Could this be anything other than a welfare program for hyper-caffeinated lawyers?

I submit this to you, our beloved Sea Change community, for advice on how to proceed.

Should I:

a) Sign the letter and make these human mosquitoes go away?

b) Tell them to stick their cease and desist letter where the sun don’t shine?

c) Declare victory in that you got a decent blog entry out of it, toss the letter and move on?