Twentieth Century Fox filed a trademark lawsuit on Monday (March 23) in a California Federal court in response to several claims by EMPIRE Distribution that the network’s new hit show Empire is profiting off of its name in the same music realm.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fox is requesting that a judge issue an order to allow the network to continue to use the title “Empire” for its record breaking series.
The pending lawsuit states that the San Francisco-based record label, EMPIRE Distribution, has demanded $8 million from Fox and alleged that the show has provided “significant confusion” with EMPIRE’s services and products.
Legal documents show Empire Distribution has a pending trademark application for use of the word “empire.” Its initial request was denied but the company tried once more after Empire premiered in January.
EMPIRE Distribution has issued a press release concerning the matter. The company’s Founder and CEO Ghazi Shami says, “customers, artists and business partners have all expressed confusion to my employees, artists, and me as to whether the Empire program has any affiliation or business relationship with EMPIRE. It does not.”
“Fox, through the Empire program, advertises, distributes, and streams music and sells downloads under the ‘Empire’ mark,” he said. “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.”
Fox’s attorney Marvin Putnam, claims the network is only receiving flack due to the show’s success.
“Unfortunately, success today can often make creators a target for a myriad of baseless legal claims,” Putnam told THR. “They hope you will just pay a little something from that success to make them go away. As underscored by today’s complaint, Fox has no intention of allowing anyone to leverageEmpire’s success for their own unwarranted financial gain.”
Last year, FOX’s high school musical series Glee dealt with similar accusations when a U.K. comedy club dubbed “The Glee Club”, filed a trademark infringement suit over the usage of “glee.” The U.K. judge ruled in favor of the club.
Read the entire Empire lawsuit via Scribd below:
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