(from AdWeek)
Posted on 03/24/2015 11:04:55 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Fox is suing a San Francisco digital music distribution company because of its name.
According to TMZ, Twentieth Century Fox Television filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against EMPIRE Distribution over the name it shares with Fox's popular television series "Empire."
Founded in 2010, EMPIRE Distribution releases digital music from urban artists including leading hip-hop stars Snoop Dogg, T.I. and Kendrick Lamar.
Fox's fictional Empire Records releases urban music including hip-hop and R&B, but in a real life twist, songs from the series are actually available for sale. Columbia Records released songs from each episode for the duration of the series and then dropped the "Original Soundtrack from Season 1 of Empire" compilation on March 10. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 Albums chart, beating Madonna's "Rebel Heart" album with 130,000 sales in the first week, reported Billboard.
“Fox, through the Empire program, advertises, distributes, and streams music and sells downloads under the ‘Empire’ mark," explained EMPIRE founder and CEO Ghazi Shami in a statement. "This music shares the same search terms as EMPIRE's music, the musical genres are identical, and the songs and albums are positioned in close proximity in online outlets such as iTunes, Google Play, Amazon.com, and Spotify. It isn’t just a fictional show; they are functioning as a record label in the real world. This only makes the public confusion worse.”
“We are confident that this is a textbook trademark infringement case,” said Michael Hobbs of Troutman Sanders LLP, the law firm representing EMPIRE, in a statement. “EMPIRE was started over five years before the first broadcast of the show, the marks are identical, and they sell the same products to the same customers. The significant number of incidents of actual public confusion is disturbing.
“The only alternative with which we are left is to litigate, which we will do vigorously to protect our client’s valuable rights," he said.
Maybe the should sue Charlemagne?
This lawsuit is ridiculous, FOX should lose.
Hard to believe people pay money for that stuff
Because the big companies win. They can afford to litigate until the other side is broke.
And I heard that as these new porn domain URL extensions come to market, that some corporations and public entertainers are being granted “first shot” at buying their names.
I understand “Microsoft.porn” and “TaylorSwift.porn” however Microsoft does not YET own the word “office” yet they were given first shot at buying “office.porn”.
For people who find the Blue Screen of Death sexy?
They are buying it to keep the name from being bought/used by someone else.
But it’d be like McDonald’s getting first crack at “burger.porn”.
(from AdWeek)
Hmm.. Let’s see how these lawsuits have been going recently.. Robin Thicke is on line one, says this is a very bad idea...
I think that fox should lose the use of empire for its series as the result of the law suit it is obvious they stole the name from the company and are infringing on there trademark.
Maybe they should sue New York for being the Empire State.
Good point.
There was an “Empire Records” from back in the 1950’s as well. Here’s a link that shows some of the labels on 45RPM singles.
http://www.colorradio.com/youngsters.html
And wasn’t there a movie called “empire records”? Was it about that actual company?
I’d like to think the REAL music company that has existed for many years would prevail over the new FICTITIOUS company.
Maybe the real co. should have sued Fox first.
And I LOVE that show, so, spoken as a fan.
I thought the word “empire” would be in the public domain by now
Maybe someone should copyright the word “fox”
Diddy going to sue because he says it’s based on his life.
Creator says loosely based on Jay Z.
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