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Netflix Sued By 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Publishers Over Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (polygon.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: Netflix's first interactive movie, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch makes no bones about its Choose Your Own Adventure inspiration, and that's reportedly caught the eye of the series' original publisher. Chooseco, a publishing company specializing in children's books, is suing Netflix for infringing on the company's "Choose Your Own Adventure" trademark. According to the official complaint, Netflix has been in negotiations with Chooseco over a license for the series since 2016, but Chooseco says Netflix never actually gained permission to use it. After the release of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch late last month, Chooseco has filed a complaint against Netflix for $25 million in damages, as the company says that Netflix's new movie benefits from association with the Choose Your Own Adventure series, without the company ever receiving the trademark. Chooseco says it sent a cease-and-desist request to Netflix at least once over the Choose Your Own Adventure trademark in the past. Netflix has declined to comment on the complaint.
Trademarks are for branding in written content, not spoken. The phrase, "choose your own adventure" is not trademarked because that is impossible. Even with subtitles they would have to be trying to confuse the customers with something that is similar to it's trademark, the words alone are not enough.
Coca-Cola would have a better chance of suing Pepsi for saying "it's like Coke but tastes better" in one of their commercials.
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Netflix won't pay much, if anything, to Chooseco.
Chooseco has no IP granting them exclusive rights to the concept of a choose your own adventure. They have copyrights over the individual works, but that only applies to those specific works. There is no patent for choose your own adventure books because they've been been around since the mid-70s, well before our patent system was completely subverted. Chooseco is just hoping to get a few bucks with the threat of a lawsuit. If it goes to trial, Chooseco will lose.
IBM, on the other hand, actually got a patent on choose your own adventure movies in 2003 (well after our patent system was subverted and anything could be patented if you added "on a computer" to it).
It wouldn't surprise me if Netflix reveals that they licensed IBM's patent prior to making Bandersnatch. If they didn't license that patent, then IBM is the company that Netflix should fear a lawsuit from.