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MST3K Rightsholders Sue Over Theater Commentary

Posted by timothy on from the no-that-is-not-your-style-because-it-is-ours dept.

An anonymous reader writes "How can people who parody people sue people who parody them? Mr. Sinus is being sued by Best Brains Inc. the owners of the rights to Mystery Science Theatre 3000 because they are using a name/format that is too similar to their own. Here is the story." Evil thought: Apple should include a "three silhouettes yakking on merged soundtrack" mode in iMovie.

2 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Um, because. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, dumbass, instead no one can:
    1) Go ask to be licensed by some guys to do the same thing they were doing *and* doing it in the same way *and* use almost the exact same way
    2) get turned down
    3) go ahead and do it anyway and just hope no one will notice.

    IF you were to *read* the (brief!) article, you would note the plantiffs just want the Mister Sinus guys to not use the Mister Sinus 3000 style name. It doesn't seem like such a big deal to me.

    People can still make fun of movies all they want--just don't call yourself MST3K without permission. (Unless, perhaps if you really *are* parodying them... which is not what the Mister Sinus guys are doing (apparently... although perhaps they'll claim different in court, if it gets to court).)

    Yes. I *am* an anonymous coward.

  2. Re:Um, because. by Mattcelt · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did you even RTFA? The MST3K owners don't even want them to stop doing the show - they just want them to use a different name, one that isn't so close to the original!

    This isn't about copyright AT ALL - it's about trademark infringement, which is a wholly different beast!