Los coffins

Dear Congressman,

As the economy starts to pick up, companies (hopefully) start to re-hire some of the 8 million who were sidelined during this recession as they start to generate more sales that trickle down to the bottom line.

Another way that companies use to protect how they generate income is to protect their products against unfair practices, such as high end retailers (aka - Gucci & Fendi) who fight against cheap knockoffs and Movie distributors who take on all those cheap Chinese & Russian knockoffs of their wares.

So why limit it to just these products? That was exactly the line of thinking that a local company,
Hillenbrand Inc., the largest U.S. maker of coffins, decided about their inventory of caskets. They filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission as Ataudes Aguilares, a Guadalajara, Mexico company, was importing caskets with "attached memorabilia compartments and mechanisms for letting funeral home directors swap out ornamental corner pieces".

Now, I am all for protecting jobs in these here United States and making sure their is a fair playing field for competition, but let me see if I understand this one:

A container designed to be placed in the ground for all eternity and viewed by mourners who are all looking at the deceased and not the container for approximately two hours tops needs a patent protection against cheap knock offs because ..... well... good point... why?

Let's ask the deceased: "Excuse me sir? Do feel cheated laying in this mexican coffin? Sir? Sir?"

Doesn't seem to matter to the deceased.

Let's ask a close relative. "Excuse me maam? Maam? Can you stop crying for a minute so I can ask you a question? No... okay.. sorry to bother you Maam."

Nope, too upset to notice that the dearly departed is lying in a taco box.

Maybe I am being flippant, but filing suit to protect a box designed to be hidden in less than 48 hours after you have purchased it does not strike me as needing protection from NAFTA. After all, chances part of the reason the deceased is deceased in the first place is the drugs he/she took that were smuggled in from Mexico.