[Infowarrior] - Summit Entertainment's at it again....

[Richard Forno]

Summit Entertainment Sues Guy Who Registered Twilight.com In 1994 For Trademark Infringement

from the are-you-freaking-serious? dept

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110909/01214215861/summit-entertainment-sues-guy-who-registered-twilightcom-1994-trademark-infringement.shtml

Movie studio Summit Entertainment has become somewhat notorious for its ridiculously over aggressive attempts to "protect" what it believes is its intellectual property. Just look at the list of stories, we've written about the company. It has shut down fanzines, stopped a documentary about the real town where Twilight is supposed to take place, sued a fashion designer for accurately noting that one of its jackets was worn by "Bella" in Twilight, been involved in a legal battle with Bath & Bodyworks for selling a body lotion called "Twilight Woods," which had nothing to do with the movies, and pressed criminal charges against a fan who tweeted some photos from the movie set of the latest Twilight flick. 

This is a company that has a massive entitlement complex, and a somewhat faulty notion of intellectual property law. 

Its latest move is to sue the guy who owns Twilight.com -- which he registered in 1994, eleven years before Stephenie Meyer published the first Twilight book and thirteen years before Summit Entertainment bought the movie rights to the book. The site, which is rather simple, does present some Amazon links to let people buy legitimate Twilight products (something you'd think Summit would like...). 

The key complaint, once again, shows the technological cluelessness of Summit. The studio says that the site infringes with links to unauthorized Twilight contests and casting calls. But, as THREsq points out in the link above, Summit appears to be confusing the content found in the Google AdSense on Twilight.com with specific links put up by the site's owner, Tom Markson. One hopes that Markson can find himself a good (pro bono?) lawyer who can explain to Summit and the court that this is not how trademark law works.