Homeland security is apparently about a lot more than protecting us from terrorists. In St. Helens, Oregon, agents visited a toy store to ask them to remove a Rubik’s Cube knock-off from shelves. Turned out the Rubik’s Cube patent has expired so the “Magic Cube” wasn’t infringing at all. But why did Homeland Security care to begin with?
Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said agents went to Pufferbelly based on a trademark infringement complaint filed in the agency’s intellectual property rights center in Washington, D.C. “One of the things that our agency’s responsible for doing is protecting the integrity of the economy and our nation’s financial systems and obviously trademark infringement does have significant economic implications,” she said.