David Sirota — Big Oil Loses It: ExxonMobil Claims it Owns the Letter “X”!

Apparently if you are the world’s richest oil company used to making $104 million in profit every day, no lawsuit is too frivolous, expensive or downright hilarious when you are the plaintiff. That’s the message from ExxonMobil this week as it filed a lawsuit against the FX television network. In court papers, the oil behemoth effectively argues that it owns the exclusive right to put two X’s next to each other....

Many of the aforementioned suits — including ExxonMobil’s — seem more than a bit absurd. Then again, the Supreme Court just ratified the right of companies to claim patent protections for DNA. So in the brave new world of intellectual property, “absurd” is apparently in the eye of the beholder.

AlterNet
Big Oil Loses It: ExxonMobil Claims it Owns the Letter “X”!
David Sirota | Salon

I recall a similar case, IIRC also involving Exxon, in which a highly successful but small in comparison company was sued on a similar pretext and just a absurd. The company folded owing to the cost of the lawsuit.