Kocky Products, a company that produces Hot Rod themed shirts with various catchy phrases, has been pushed out of business by Ford due to their claim that they hold copyright to the images of the Ford Mustangs that are printed on various Ford t-shirts that they sell. The images of the Mustangs are images submitted by Mustang owners of their cars and not of official images released by Ford. The owner of Kocky Products, Keith Bishop, stated that when they started the business they sought legal advice and were told that Ford does not own the right to pictures of Mustangs taken by their owners. They went on this advice and up until now received no trouble from Ford. However, a collection firm, as he calls them, claiming to represent Ford is complaining that those images of the Mustangs that were submitted by customers violate their copyright because you can see various trademarks such as the running pony and blue oval on the cars. Now they face lawyer fees of up to $38,000 dollars to fight this with no guarantee of a win.

This won’t be the first time that Ford has threatened lawsuits on businesses using their names. American Muscle was forced to change their name from MustangParts.com to it’s current name in order to stay in business because of the use of ‘Mustang’ in their domain name. Most recently though, the Black Mustang Club was threatened with legal action due to their Ford Mustang calendars that consisted of pictures of their members Ford Mustangs. They ended up being given permission by Ford to produce the calendar.

Kocky Products is set to go out of business by the end of January but some shirts are already sold out due to a buying frenzy, So if you were putting off getting a t-shirt from Kocky Products you should head over there now and see what they have left.