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From Engadget:
Netflix's choose-your-own-adventure style film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is the subject of a new lawsuit, brought against the streaming giant by Chooseco LLC The company is known for publishing the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series popular in the 1980s and 90s, and it's claiming Netflix infringed upon its trademarks, Variety reports. Netflix tried to obtain a license for Chooseco's trademark in the past, according to Chooseco, but never reached a deal with the publisher.
In its complaint, Chooseco specifically points to a scene in Bandersnatch where a character makes a reference to a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book -- and that appears to be Chooseco's main infringement charge against Netflix. It also says Netflix is "causing confusion, tarnishing, denigrating and diluting the distinct quality of the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' trademark," and that Bandersnatch's "dark and violent themes" reflect poorly on its brand.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Booga1 on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:39AM (12 children)
One the one hand, trademarks are used in isolation. You can have Acme Tool Company and Acme University both having the same trademark on "Acme," so just because they used "Choose Your Own Adventure" in the show doesn't automatically mean the book trademark and film trademarks would result in confused viewers.
On the other hand, Netflix obviously thought the usage was close enough that they were negotiating with Chooseco for the rights to use it.
I guess my questions would be:
My bet is the only winners here will be lawyers. I suspect most viewers would neither confuse Netflix's usage with the book trademark, nor would they feel it damaged that trademark.
(Score: 4, Informative) by RandomFactor on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:50AM (6 children)
They also sued for a Jeep commercial that used 'choose your adventure'
I can understand Netflix somewhat, particularly if they have plans to move into that medium, but Jeep isn't referring to any genre of media consumption, just driving around in the woods, roads, beach, whatever. So I'm going to lean towards overzealous trademark protection.
I have to wonder what this means for Ren'Py novels?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Wednesday January 16 2019, @08:31AM (5 children)
I would proffer that "choose your own adventure" is an exemplar for that situation. As is "Windows". Genericised trademarks not so, the order of time is important, and kleenex/sharpie/xerox/etc. did get there first, and they weren't the simplest natural language description for the thing before they became genericised, even if they are now.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday January 16 2019, @11:56AM
Heh! Subway got away with it - they made a trademark [upi.com] from their descriptive (but falling short [huffingtonpost.com.au]) names of their products.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by mobydisk on Wednesday January 16 2019, @03:19PM (3 children)
It never occurred to me how Microsoft could try to abuse that trademark. As evil as Microsoft has been, I've never heard of them trying to sue someone for using the term "windows" to describe the UI concept, or the portals installed on the sides of my house and car. That would be hilarious actually.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Booga1 on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:03PM (2 children)
Behold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Lindows.com,_Inc. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Booga1 on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:09PM (1 child)
Though, in retrospect that was over the name of the OS, not the actual UI concept.
The lawsuit to try to lock down the GUI was by Apple against Microsoft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corp. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by mobydisk on Friday January 18 2019, @05:43PM
I was going to point out the Lindows OS name thing. Thanks for the clarification.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:05PM (4 children)
It was referenced in the show itself in relation to a fictional book called "Bandersnatch". (The Lewis Carroll estate might also be interested, but it was a character and not a title of a book). The fictional book was described as a "choose your own adventure" book by the protagonist, a hobbyist programmer trying to adapt the book for a computer game. The series is set in the 80s in Britain and has various 8-bit systems. The author of the fictional book ends up going insane and committing murder and being committed. The protagonist in many variations also takes unflattering actions during the course of it (not wanting to spoiler much).
Like the books themselves the movie itself offers the viewer pathways to choose (does character do X or Y?) and has loopbacks and can repeat cycles of the narrative which may adjust slightly to the order in which the paths are chosen. As a quasi-horror quasi historical sci/fi it is excellent IMVHO. (Mrs. Lawn, who likes Black Mirror anyway, turned me on to it and we watched it this past weekend).
My personal opinion, were I a biased juror, would be:
Yes, they use the name in the show. They use the name in regards to a book. They use it as a generic moniker, but it is a trademarked name in the book world. Other book series have had to use other descriptors for the format. The coloration of the book's creator, etc. could cause a negative association with the series. The name has been used before in a 2008 Australian TV series, licensing status unknown but probably irrelevant.
The only defense the producers could mount IMVVVHO would be to claim that the title has slipped into generic usage. (And/or settle for a small sum and edit the film to remove the name).
I think what the book publishers want is for people to shun the movie. Frumiously. Too bad it's so good!
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Wednesday January 16 2019, @05:18PM
Thanks for the run down. Might give that a shot this weekend if I find time!
(Score: 2) by Kalas on Thursday January 17 2019, @01:32AM (2 children)
So is the movie online only then? I suppose the branching pathways deal could be done off a BD too but it makes me wonder because I see there's no shortage of pirated releases for it. Sounds like anyone pirating it without knowing the nature of the movie is getting only one fixed version without even knowing it's supposed to be interactive because these are just loose video files I'm seeing in the torrents. Unless I'm thinking of this wrong and the "interactivity" is more like "for option A go to exact time X" so you're just skipping along one big long video file.
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Thursday January 17 2019, @03:38AM
Branching pathways in "movies" is not exactly new. DVD had the options for different footage for viewing angles.
In addition to that, the directional buttons have even been used to make full games work on DVD by skipping to different chapters mid-movie, like Dragon's Lair. [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday January 17 2019, @11:23PM
It was produced by Netflix and AFAIK is an online Netflix exclusive. I think we looked at least once while it was playing that it didn't seem to have quite the same play controls as a regular netflix movie. The scene keeps playing in the background as the choices are shown just below the screen, and continues to play a little bit after you click before it transitions - very smoothly - to the scene in the option you chose. Like I mentioned above, sometimes you find yourself looping back to the same scene (or being offered to go either to the credits or click to an earlier point in the story,) but even then some of the scenes were subtly different when replaying from a branched point. And several times it gave flash-montage recaps of the story when jumping back to earlier scenes.
One might be able to manage the movie through subsequent jumps to DVD-menus, but I doubt it could be anywhere like what it was live.
And for some other history of this in Media, I'd reference the movie Clue from 1985/6 which had different endings depending on the theatre, but the closest I can think of is not just Dragon's Lair as mentioned by Booga1 but the interactive Star Trek story Borg which had John DeLancie as Q, the Borg, and a completely different ship and crew than any other series (which was one of the best Trek titles ever IMVVHO but YMMV.)
This sig for rent.