IHOP sues International House of Prayer group over name

well that was bound to happen...

I am actually rather shocked it took this long--IHOP (the NARasite church, not the pancake restaraunt) engaged in an especially egregrious form of "trademark naughtiness" that is EXTREMELY common in the dominionist community.

(For something like twenty years--at LEAST--dominionist groups have printed T-shirts and adverts meant to be nearly identical to legitimate trademarked logos and images, only subtly changed for purposes of prosyletisation--"Pepsi: Choice of a New Generation" changed to "Jesus: Choice of the Last Generation" and so on; at least one ripped off Coke's "Real Thing" motto and logo explicitly, and an advert for a NARasite "teen center" also ripped off the XBox360 "X Sphere" trademark logo). Examples can be found pretty much anywhere that sells "Christian" T-shirts; generally the makers have claimed these were "parodies".)

Even names of political dominionist groups do this--the American Center for Law and Justice, a dominionist legal-bullying org, named itself so its acronym is similar to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLJ versus ACLU)--pretty much explicitly for purposes of confusion (ACLJ even explicitly promotes itself as the dominionist "Christian Alternative" to the ACLU!). At least one neo-Confederate group that is allied with Christian Reconstructionists also has tried to pull the same stunt with its acronym to have it be deceptively similar to the Southern Poverty Law Center (which is anti-racist, anti-neo-Confederate, and is increasingly anti-NARasite due to the latter often stepping over the line into anti-Moslem and especially anti-LGBT hate acts).

If the *real* IHOP (that is, the house of happy pancake goodness) wins this, this sets a very nice precedent to "Al Capone" a number of dominionist groups. (Al Capone, as you recall, was NOT busted for being a ganglord in Chicago. Rather, he got busted for tax evasion for not reporting the income from his gangland activities...)