Mister Softee takes a hard line: That’s his tune.

In New Jersey, someone is always trying to run a scam. Cut in to your territory. Play your tune. Think we're talking about NJ politics?

Nope: The ice cream biz. It’s a hard sell selling soft ice cream in the Garden State. Especially, if you’re out of tune.

Jim Conway, Jr. is the owner of the Mister Softee ice cream company located in Camden County. That jingle we are all familiar with from the 1960s is his identifiable trademark. And if you’re trying to sell soft ice cream from your own truck in his neighborhoods ----his warning to you: Get your own jingle.

It seems that Danny’s Soft Serve ice cream truck has been driving around Newark, playing the Mister Softee jingle in order to con the neighborhood kids in to buying his ice cream. Sooo, Mister Conway called his lawyer, and he is suing Mister Danny. By the way, it was Conway’s dad that penned the very familiar jingle.

More than 600 trucks across the USA play that jingle every day. And since a trademark is defined as

As a mark is a distinctive sign or indicator of some kind which is used by an individual, business organization or other legal entity to identify uniquely the source of its products and/or services to consumers, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities.

In this case, the “distinctive sign or indicator” is a tune.

Conway told the Star Ledger “It’s easier to attract people to get out of their houses if they think it’s Mister Softee.” ”And he used video surveillance that caught Danny outside a Newark school scamming the kids.

Maybe, just maybe, come Election Day some scamming politicos will use the same jingle attract voters to the polls.