Rockstar Forces L.A. Noir TV Show Name Change

[GAunderrated]

I know it's "not the point" but having the TV show named the same as the game is hardly going to cause much confusion. It's not like it will prevent a loss of sales due to people picking the "wrong one".

If anything it'd help game sales as people searching for L.A. Noir would get the game come up in searches even if they were looking for the show.

Sadly the whole "You have to defend your copyright or risk losing it" rule makes it necessary for them.

I think merchandising is the problem with conflicting titles. If people made posters/tshirts/and whatever nick nacks with the same name it would cause brand confusion. I don't agree with it at all but I just wanted to post a counter argument from their side.

 

[caleb451]

But now they have to call it L.E. Noir, but that'd just be silly-oh wait.

 

[Mike Richards]

I don't think it's that ridiculous to want to keep control of their title, however generic a title it may be. If a modern military themed series came out called Call of Duty or Modern Warfare, a lot of people would think it had something to do with the game and rightly so.

If anything, I think Darabont got lucky. Lost Angels is a much, much better name.

 

[RicoADF]

I don't think it's that ridiculous to want to keep control of their title, however generic a title it may be. If a modern military themed series came out called Call of Duty or Modern Warfare, a lot of people would think it had something to do with the game and rightly so.

If anything, I think Darabont got lucky. Lost Angels is a much, much better name.

A book was written with that name first, then they copied it. Now their threaternong to sue someone for using the books name. The author should be suing the dicks at rockstar not rockstar at the series.

 

[Kirov Reporting]

A book was written with that name first, then they copied it. Now their threaternong to sue someone for using the books name. The author should be suing the dicks at rockstar not rockstar at the series.

.. But he didn't. I would imagine it's now far too late to say anything, though there may be a case for defending the use of the name considering the book was there first, but as the author didn't protest at the time the game came out, most courts would probably side with the studio.

If he didn't notice and didn't act, or didn't care, that's his prerogative. They did notice and did act, staking their claim to it. Was it arbitrary? Perhaps, but that's the whole point of defending a copyright or what have you, you do need to make those arbitrary moves and stop people infringing.

If the TV show blew hard and people thought the game was a tie-in, they could lose sales, I think it's as simple as that.

 

[Kahani]

So, forgive my ignorance, what's the problem? How can Rockstar sure someone for using a name which was in use even before they made the game?

Trademarks only cover specific things. So, for example, a while back a lot of people tried to mock Cadbury's for trademarking the colour purple, without understanding that the trademark only covered chocolate bars and similar items. Obviously it's reasonable for Cadbury's to want to prevent people from making products that look the same and might fool people into buying the wrong thing.

In this case, Rockstar's trademark probably covers an area along the lines of "multimedia", while books would fall into a different area. So no-one can make a computer game, TV show, film or anything similar named LA Noire, but a book probably wouldn't enter into things at all. That means Rockstar aren't infringing anything since even if the book is trademarked, it's a different area, while the TV show could be infringing on Rockstar's trademark. However, it's worth noting that this hasn't actually gone to court, so no-one's determined that anything actually is infringing anything else. It's just close enough that Rockstar are probably legally obliged to defend it just in case, as others have already noted.

It's also worth noting that different countries treat trademarks differently. In some, trademark protection depends to some extent on market share. So it's possible that the book simply isn't that popular, but there are concerns that the international trademark status might have problems if the film is popular.

 

[teebeeohh]

love the response, it reads like "those filthy videogame peasant use their ill-gotten games to prevent me, who is oh so much more important than the people who don't work in hollywood, from making my magnificent art"