Proud to be a Politico

I'm proud to be referred to a Politico, it is a word that predates the Internet, one quick Internet search shows it appears in Webster's dictionary in 1913. In the UK there are Labour politicos, Lib Dem Politicos, Green Politicos and Tory Politicos.

One of the latter is of course Tory Politico but heaven forbid that the might of corporate legislative America should claim that a word in common parlance should be copyrighted and used exclusively by them. But that is what they have done to Tory Politico.

I note that this company claiming copyright has a Wikipedia page which states that they were founded on 27 January 2007. Now forgive me if I'm wrong but I seem to recall Tory Politco being around before that. I know blogs come and go and the old memory of who started when is a little shady.

Their lawyers claims that unsurprising for an English language blog based in the UK that the second most populous country for hits is the USA. Well I dare any UK blog to check their hits and prove otherwise, unless they specialise in Australia or Canadian subjects of interest. For each month I've been tracking the USA is my second most common country of traffic origin, I'm glad the American's have taste and some of them check out UK angles on US stories.

The also claim that Tory Politico's template is similar to theirs.

Let me see:

• Header Check although Tory Politico uses larger font and centres his title
  
• List of stories Check but then we all do that
  
• Sidebar right Check but then we all do that (or should) for Mobile viewing
• Colours red, white and blue Check watch out Union Flag you're next with your colour scheme
• Ads Not Check yeah Tory Politico is ad free but they are all over the Politico

I'm sorry that anyone thinks that Americans are stupid enough to confuse Tory Politico's reporting of UK politics with The Politico's reporting of US politics. I would have thought that the lack of daily Obama stories, congressional race intrigue or Senate Filibusters may have been a give away. Facing attacks on Gordon Brown or praise for David Cameron may just have given that away.

Tory Politico is standing his ground to use a word of Italian and Spanish origin that some US ENGLISH blog claims is their word. This blog stand shoulder to should with them. The NFL earlier this week almost tried to imposed image rights on the fleur-de-lys after the Freedom Fries the French would have been bombing NFL HQ.

UPDATE I noticed that someone on TP's comments has spotted that Politoco's (oops sorry that is Iain Dale's trademank) the lawyer of Politoco is called Dow Lohnes, maybe we should all alert the New York Stock Exchange that someone is using a name very similar to their index to add gravitas to their stupudity.

Hat tip to Iain Dale.