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Kanye serves Coinye with cease and desist, alleging infringement

Kanye serves Coinye with cease and desist, alleging infringement

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Kanye West 3
Kanye West 3

Kanye West may not be as easygoing as you thought. On Monday, lawyers working for West delivered cease and desist letters to the coders responsible for Coinye, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The letter demanded the group stop distribution and promotion of the Bitcoin-style cryptocurrency, alleging that Coinye's cartoon image of West constitutes a form of infringement. "Given Mr. West’s wide-ranging entrepreneurial accomplishments, consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that Mr. West is the source of your services," the letter reads in part.

The currency is set to be released to the public on the 11th, giving West less than a week to prevent the launch. Once the code is public, the original coders will be unable to prevent its use, forcing West's legal team to prosecute every instance of Coinye individually. "We want to release this to the public before the man can try to crush it," one of the coders told the Journal in a Skype interview. "They’ll still come after us, but that’s okay."