Caution! Caution! Caution!

I have seen it all.

I created this jaunty little graphic to put on a coffee mug at my cafepress.com shop. I got inspired the other day to do something like this - I was lounging on the sofa reading a book with a cup of water setting on the floor next to me. Cragar saunters his little puppy butt over, sticks his nose in the cup and slurped up half my water! With his water dish 4 feet away, no less! Honestly, I thought it was hilarious, and since it was only water it was no big deal. So I thought it would be neat to put on the side of a cup.

I got a nice profile photo of Cragar and traced it, and made the graphic. I uploaded it to my shop and created the mug. About 3 hours later, I found it was no longer in my store - it was flagged for possible copyright/trademark infringement. OK, so I'm thinking I stepped on OSHA's toes or something. After reading the cafepress.com forums, it turns out some guy trademarked the word "CAUTION!" for apparel. Granted, I'm not putting it on apparel, so I would probably be able to use it, but what the hell? First, I did not use a "!" with the word. I in no way used this dink's logo, and if he wants to scream about people using the colors yellow and black together, someone better warn all the honeybees in the world that he's coming after them. Actually, that might be kind of fun to watch.

I can see trademarking/copyrighting the word Caution as part of the company name - but the word itself? Can I trademark the word "the"? How about I trademark the letters a, e, i, o, and u. Ha!

I'd like to see this guy go after OSHA! That would be a riot!