I read an article about the big 3 last year that said there are a lot of very smart people working in Detroit and it may take them a while but with determination and hard work, they will drive themselves out of business.
Instead of hiring lawyers, they should deploy the marketing guys and push their wares instead of chasing them away.
All the car companies are doing this unfortunately. A big VW/Porsche engine rebuilder/supplier in Georgia was hassled by lawyers from said automakers for using the words Beetle, Bug, VW etc.
And by the way Ford is anything but profitable. Which makes their actions even dumber.
Never underestimate the stupidity of groupthink in large bureaucracies.
A story of a company shutting up their legal dept. is LEGOs. Someone hacked the operating system to the Mindstorm robotic toys shortly after LEGOs introduced it. The legal dept. advised legal action (Duh, what else would they suggest?). The marketing guys stepped in and pointed out that sales moved up significantly after the hack was published. LEGOs smartly encouraged the public use of the operating system and raked in the cash.
Cheers,
Fin
