The Federal Bureau of Investigation Office of General Counsel (GLU) sent a letter to Wikimedia Foundation (the parent company of Wikipedia) ordering them to remove the FBI shield from it’s pages (“Unathorized posting of the FBI Seal”) and threatening litigation.

The image in question is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US-FBI-
ShadedSeal.svg.

The letter states that “the site itself notes, ‘Unauthorized use of the FBI seal . . . is
subject to criminal prosecution under Federal criminallaw, including 18 U.S.C. 701.’” Unauthorized reproduction or use of the FB I Seal is prohibited by 18 United States  Code, Section 701.

The underlying concern for reproduction of the seal is to prevent people from reproducing the seal and flashing it without authority. However, many websites, including the web version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, display a reproduction of the seal.

Wikipedia responded with a fairly “feisty” (as described by the NY Times): “While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version.”