Kapow! A judge has just issued an injunction against a lesser known Comic-Con convention, slapping it with a trademark ban and a nearly $4 million attorneys’ fee award.
In what could be a death blow to any “Comic-Con” that doesn’t take place in San Diego, the home of the famed original fanboy festival, a California federal judge has issued an injunction against a Salt Lake City version of the convention in one of the biggest trademark cases in the entertainment industry in years, as the Hollywood Reporter notes.
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Certainly the ruling could have serious implications for the plethora of cape-brandishing cons out there in the ever-expanding universe of fandom, such as the relatively new “Silicon Valley Comic Con.”
The San Diego Comic Convention, which was founded in 1970, was the plaintiff in the case, taking on Dan Farr and Bryan Brandenburg, who ran the Salt Lake Comic Con. At a trial held last winter, San Diego prevailed on its contention that it held valid rights to the name and that Salt Lake was infringing its trademarks. The jury didn’t find willfulness, only punishing Salt Lake to the tune of $20,000 in corrective advertising.
Salt Lake then asked U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Battaglia to put aside the ruling and order a new trial. Instead, in a series of orders issued late Thursday, as the Hollywood Reporter cited, Battaglia not only upheld the jury’s verdict and issued an injunction, but ordered the defendants to pay almost $4 million in attorneys’ fees and costs. The decision comes just a week before the Salt Lake convention was about to get under way. Thanks to this court case, it’s already been rebranded as the FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention.
Battaglia, in his order, has enjoined Salt Lake from using “Comic Con” and “Comic-Con” and any phonetic equivalents (i.e. ComiKon). Additionally, Farr and Brandenburg can’t operate any social media site that incorporates the trademark, nor can they advertise that the festival they run was “formerly known as Salt Lake Comic Con.” Ouch. Time for a new origin story.
“At every opportunity, DFP (Dan Farr Productions) has repeated, re-argued, and recycled arguments already briefed by both parties and analyzed and ruled on by the court,” the judge wrote in his ruling, a copy of which was posted online by Deadline. “This type of wasteful litigation tactic forced SDCC to expend extra, unnecessary legal fees and drove this court to squander already limited judicial resources.”
The defendants repeatedly and “astonishingly” cited the Oxford Dictionary definition of “con” in mounting their defense, the judge said. “Ultimately, resembling a broken record, DFP has repetitively restated and rehashed several contentions that they were unable to advance successfully prior to trial,” he wrote. “This type of cyclical motion practice is objectively unreasonable and has justified attorneys’ fees.”
That’s the judicial equivalent of “Hulk smash!”
