Posts Tagged: "Comic-Con"

Costumes and Copyrights: Can you afford to wear that?

There’s a season every year where individuals dress-up in homemade costumes and gather for tricks, treats… and comic books? That’s right, it’s comic-con season! Many fans proudly wear costumes that they create themselves, dressing up as their favorite super hero, anime cartoon, or video game character. However, one thing they probably are not considering is whether those costumes could put them in jeopardy of a copyright infringement claim. But, since the costume industry as a whole is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States alone, it is a consideration that could have costly consequences.

Jury Awards San Diego Comic Convention Corrective Advertising Damages Against Salt Lake Comic Con Organizers

A jury in the Southern District of California entered a special verdict form in a trademark case playing out between a couple of American pop culture conventions. The verdict shows that the jury found in favor of plaintiff San Diego Comic Convention against a group of defendants using the “COMIC-CON” mark to publicize a similar event organized in recent years in Salt Lake City, UT. The verdict also awards $20,000 in corrective advertising damages to San Diego Comic Convention for defendants’ infringement of multiple trademarks held by the San Diego event organization.

San Diego Comic Con succeeds on several motions in trademark infringement case against Salt Lake City Comic Con event organizers

On September 12th, Judge Anthony Battaglia of the Southern District of California entered an order granting motions made by the San Diego Comic Convention in a trademark case over the use of the Comic-Con title on pop culture conventions. The order also denies motions made by a Utah-based entity which has presented a biannual Salt Lake Comic Con since 2013… The recent order entered in the Southern California case denied Dan Farr Productions’ motion to exclude testimony from an expert witness testifying for plaintiff San Diego Comic Convention while also granting a motion by San Diego to deny an expert presented by Dan Farr. Dan Farr tried to argue that San Diego’s expert witness, which included the results of a Teflon survey on the generic nature of the term “Comic-Con”, as such evidence only matters in genericide cases and not where the trademark was generic prior to the owner’s use. However, the defendant’s own pleading in the counterclaim, where it asserted a defense of generic mark, and the court found the evidence to be relevant to the case.

Comic-Con Considerations: Cosplay, the Right of Publicity, and Copyright Concerns

For as much as Comic-Con is about comics, TV, and upcoming movies, it’s not hard to see that a large portion of its allure for fans is cosplay. Cosplay consists of fans who create and wear costumes and outfits based on their favorite characters in media, spanning all forms of entertainment but most notably, video games, comics, movies, and TV shows. Even though cosplay is about the characters, there are still normal people behind the armor (for a given value of normal), and these people all have their own right of publicity.