A long while back an acquaintance gave me a VHS tape (giving you an idea of precisely how long back we’re talking) of a movie called Terminal Impact. It was being rotated out of the selection at the movie rental place that he worked. The movie was pretty lame. It was about “college students” (that looked 40) being turned into deadly cyborgs. Not coincidentally, there was a blockbuster film called Terminal Velocity starring Charlie Sheen that came out at the same time. They had a similar name and the font of the title was similar, but that’s where the similarities ended. It was pretty clear that the entire purpose of the movie’s title was to get rentals from people who were confused. (Indeed, the movie was created with another title and they changed it to match.)
Erik wrote about a resurgence of “mockbusters” a while ago. I was talking to a friend who was saying that somebody should do something about this.
I really, really hope that nobody does. I hope that, if Disney and others start flinging lawsuits, that they lose them. Terminal Impact may have been a waste of 90 minutes of my life, and would have been a waste of a couple dollars if I had actually paid for it, but the last thing I want is for courts to have to have to wade through distinctions of impact of a terminal nature versus velocity of a terminal nature. My concern is that it opens the doors to the entertainment variant of software patents.
It wouldn’t bother me if Hollywood Pictures (the makers of Terminal Velocity) forced Nu Image Films (the makers of Terminal Impact) to go with the movie’s original title (“Cyborg Cop III”), though that one didn’t make much sense either (the baddies, not the cops, were cyborgs) and were likely taking advantage of an associated title (the movie bears no resemblance to the previous Cyborg cops, the second of which also had an alternate title). However, two movies with redhead leads with the movie “Brave” in the title strikes me as more problematic. What if it’s a girl with brown hair? What if it’s a year later? Three years later? The opportunities for trademark trolling seem evident, to me. And it would almost certainly apply in only a single direction where Pixar can determine a small studio’s packaging while a small studio would have a much harder time doing the opposite.
So, in the end, we are responsible for knowing precisely which movie it is that we want to see. If somebody is taking advantage of our failure to do so, I can live with that.
There may be a difference in trademark laws in the US, but in Singapore, Subway tried to sue a local sandwich place called Subway niche for trademark infringement. The smaller chain Subway niche actually won because it had trademarked its name before Subway had opened a franchise in Singapore, their products we sufficiently different and that their actual logo actually looked different even though both logos had Subway on them.
It works the same in the United States largely.
The famous example that I learned in my trademark law class is that Burger King is not allowed to open up stores in one Michigan town because a mom and pop has been using the name Burger King in that area for a long time. Something around decades.
This is becoming something of a problem for authors with the advent of easy self-publishing on Amazon. People will pound out some amateur schlock and give it a title similar to a best seller.
When I was in Frankfurt I kept seeing these pizza delivery cars with what appeared to be the “Domino’s” logo, except they were marked “Romino’s”. My buddy explained that the shops had opened there before Domino’s came in and had been using Domino’s name/logo, and were forced to change it by Domino’s (I guess they thought that the “R” invoked “Rome”, and made it sound more Italian, so they just changed the first letter but basically nothing else).
Actually thinking about it, there may be another reason they went with “R”. I wonder if they just used some paint and added two “legs” under the “D” to save costs on changing their signage.
Likewise James Bomd, Agent 887.
There used to be a store near me called “Carpet Zone”. The font and layout were very similar to the title card for Serling’s “Twilight Zone”. Then a few years ago they took the “Z” off and it’s now “Carpet one”. I’ve sometimes wondered if there was a lawsuit involved.
I bought a knockoff movie for “bad movie night” that tried to surf off the publicity on the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movie a few years back. It illustrated Holmes and Watson tangling with dinosaurs.
“Bad movie night” failed. The plot, the acting, and the premise were all too good. The SFX were comparable to a SyFy Creature Feature but the rest of the movie was… pretty good. Silly, yes. But I’d watch this movie again voluntarily.
Too hard a clampdown on “mockbusters” would have squelched what turned out to be a pretty decent movie.
Isn’t there a fundamental difference between a movie that trades on someone else’s Intellectual Property and trademarks and a movie that simply employs public domain character at the same time as another film with a bigger budget?
I don’t think anybody objects to the existence of B movies (well, for any reason other than taste). It’s just the obvious attempt to create brand confusion. And no matter how much money movies studios spend on Cinderella or Sherlock Holmes or Abraham Lincoln, they still don’t own those brands.
My wise once walked into a video rental store intending to get Edward Scissorhands, but wound up by mistake with a similarly-titled movie also starring Johnny Depp (Ed Wood). That worked out fine.
However, two movies with redhead leads with the movie “Brave” in the title strikes me as more problematic.
I recall seeing this in one of those video-rental kiosks when Brave was still out — an animated film called “Braver”, or something like that, with a picture of a red-haired girl.
Much More Braverer Than The Other One
I (amazingly) was right, it is called Braver:
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/movies/movie-news/disney-legal-move-on-brave-mockbuster-1268627 :
BRAVER, a budget animated flick has been accused by the entertainment giants of cashing in on their blockbuster hit Brave.
THE DVD cover shows a ginger-haired princess wearing a green dress and standing in an enchanted forest.
But this isn’t Disney’s £120million Scottish blockbuster Brave – it’s English-made Braver, churned out for just £64,000.
B Rave. There are the Irish parties that the Pretty People go to… and there are the Irish parties that everyone else goes to. This movie is about one of *THOSE* parties.
And then there’s the movie about the last robot fish on Earth, Wall-Eye.
While I don’t know where the line is, and obviously support as much latitude as possible, I do think that Braver may cross it. Actually, less because I am worried about people confusing one for the other, but Braver very much sounds like a sequel to Brave. (With Bravest being the third, and Most Bravest Ever being about the next generation of bravelings.)
The Asylum (www.theasylum.cc) is the current king of the mockbusters. Recent titles include Paranormal Entity, Almighty Thor, Battle of Los Angeles, 11/11/11, and Abraham Lincoln Vs. Zombies. They also do a lot of those Syfy “X vs. Y” originals where X and Y are drawn from their stock CGI models (shark, octopus, alligator, etc.) or mixes thereof (sharktopus, crocapython).
I’m kind of surprised the mockbuster business model still works, with Blockbuster undead. Do people make the same mistakes with their Netflix or on-demand picks?
At least when you go into a DVD place, the actual movies are there alongside the mockbusters and it’s easy to spot the difference. With internet streaming, the real movies often won’t be available and it becomes an easier mistake to make.
That may be why the “real” studios don’t mind. Oh, people are pirating Brave, are they? LET’S SEED ONE THOUSAND COPIES OF BRAVER AND CALL IT BRAVE AND PUT IT OUT THERE.
The Asylum was the producer of the Sherlock Holmes movie I wrote so well of above. Also made Megashark versus Giant Octopus which was a fishin’ fantastic choice for Bad Movie Night. There was some extra cheese on them nachos, let me tell you!