A small French T-shirt maker has attracted the ire of international hacking collective Anonymous after the clothes company filed an application to trademark the Anonymous logo and slogan.
Early Flicker asked France's National Institute of Industrial Property on February 16 to let it use the notorious group's visual tags in various forms, including on clothing, bags or dishes.
The Anonymous logo features a suited figure with a question mark instead of a head and its slogan includes the warning: "We do not Forgive. We do not Forget."
After the Parisien newspaper first reported the filing this week, the action drew quick scorn from Anonymous. In a grainy video posted on YouTube, a synthesised voice says Anonymous will attack Early Flicker's online presence.
"Their arrogance and ignorance of what they have done will not go unpunished," intones the voice, as a masked person holds a statement. "Anonymous will take down any business they have going on the Internet."
As of Saturday, one of Early Flicker's websites was not functioning and another had been replaced by a statement from the company's manager, Apollinaire Auffret.
In it, he says his firm only sells a handful of items a day and he registered the Anonymous logo and slogan because he was concerned about running into legal problems if he printed them and someone else had already registered them.
"No bans were put in place for their use and NO MONEY was claimed in copyright," Auffret said in a statement in French.
He could not be reached for additional comment.
Anonymous said it would continue to attack the T-shirt maker until its trademark registration had been revoked and a public apology issued.