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Fishs Eddy Told To Drop Items Featuring Port Authority 'Assets'

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A well-known Manhattan housewares store has been ordered to stop selling merchandise associated with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The agency said Fishs Eddy is "unfairly reaping'' a benefit from an association with the Port Authority.

Fishs Eddy Told To Drop Items Featuring Port Authority Assets

It singled out dinnerware items decorated with cartoon-like depictions of the twin towers, the new World Trade Center and Lincoln and Holland tunnels, all owned by the Port Authority.

"It's so far from representation it's almost ridiculous," store owner Julie Gaines told WCBS 880's Marla Diamond. "It is ridiculous."

A lawyer for the agency told the store in a letter last week to stop selling items with these "assets'' on them, The New York Times reported. The letter also asked that the material "bearing the assets'' be destroyed.

A Port Authority spokeswoman said similar trademark enforcement efforts had been undertaken and that Fishs Eddy was not being singled out, but Gaines thinks otherwise, Diamond reported.

"I think they're probably, maybe, using us to set an example," Gaines said. "We are a small business...there's bigger businesses out there."

The store's owners say dropping the patterns will hurt their business.

"If you do anything for 30 years I think you get the benefit of landmark status and people come all over for this pattern," Gaines said. "It's definitely staying, we're going to put up a fight."

The popular housewares shop on Broadway at 19th Street successfully fought back a challenge from the Chrysler Building in the 1990s, Diamond reported.

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