"Life is Good ®" is one of the most banal and hypocritical trademarks in existence. These people make t-shirts that extol life's little pleasures, while simultaneously including that little ® symbol on the front of each one.

No one is ever legally required to use those ® symbols. The purpose of using them is to inform anyone who sees your product that you are the exclusive owner of the word or phrase you've placed it next to and if they use that word or phrase without your express written permission you will sue them for every god damn penny. Simply put, its a threat.

Its quite possible for you to defend a valid trademark claim without making that threat on everything you publish. The real value of making the threat is that it increases the amount of damages that you can collect for infringement. If someone genuinely didn't know that you had trademarked the phrase they might be able to respond to an infringement claim by simply ceasing their use of the mark. However, if they clearly saw and ignored your threat then you can go after them for statutory damages and attorney's fees. In other words, you can really fuck them.

I presume that most of their customers just don't see the ®. They wear it and the see the "life is good" message, and they don't see the "we'll fucking sue you" message positioned right next to it. I can't do that. I can't pretend that the t-shirts don't say "we'll fucking sue you."

And they're not fucking kidding about it either:

Although the company isn't eager to talk about it, LIG just wrapped up two years' worth of frivolous litigation against LG Electronics, the $35 billion Korean conglomerate that sells DVD players, cellphones, and refrigerators. In a suit filed two summers ago, LIG claims the Koreans' ``Life's Good" ad campaign infringes on their trademark, and alleges that LG's boring corporate logo ``is strikingly similar" to Jake, which it is not.

Assholes.