The Fake Cheers Bar: 5 Knockoffs No One Should Have Got Away With
In your everyday life, copyright seems like a big bother. You’ll upload some video talking about the world, and you’ll get a strike because it’s been claimed by the copyright holder of the 1997 song “Breaking All the Rules.” This is even though the company who claimed your video doesn’t actually own the rights to that song, and it’s even though your video didn’t feature that song at all.
Copyright also serves a legitimate function, however. And when someone tries violating a trademark, it’s time to go off to court, leading to the end of such operations as...
The Bar That Copyrighted Margaritaville
In 1977, “Margaritaville” was just a song. It was biggest song of Jimmy Buffett’s career but not explosively successful. Today, it’s the name of a whole franchise that Buffett founded, featuring restaurants, resorts and cruises. Between those two points in time, Buffett ran into a hiccup when he first wanted to open a single restaurant named Margaritaville. The restaurant chain Chi-Chi’s were currently using the name, for a drink (their own take on a margherita, of course).
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The problem wasn’t that the drink referenced his song, though it did. The problem was that they now owned a trademark on the word in the context of restaurants, keeping Buffett from using it for a restaurant of his own. His ownership of the song that inspired all this gave him nothing in this fight, because under U.S. law, you can copyright songs but cannot copyright song titles.
Buffett ended up buying the trademark from Chi-Chi’s for $100,000, a sale that was made considerably easier for him by the fact that the chain was going through bankruptcy. That worked out for the best, but our recommendation would have been for him to instead name his restaurant “Buffett Buffet.” The two words would be pronounced differently, because it would be owned by Jimmy Buffett and would serve all-you-can-eat meals.
Fake Airport ‘Cheers’ Bars
In the 1990s, another intellectual property scandal rocked the bar world. Airports around the country were setting up their own bars, patterned on the bar from TV’s Cheers. Staff spoke in Boston accents (something few on the show ever did), and menu items were themed after the show’s characters. Sitting at the bar were two animatronic characters, modeled on the characters Norm and Cliff.
They weren’t modeled very closely on Norm and Cliff. It’s possible that Marriott, which was the company behind this scheme, repurposed existing animatronics or hired artists with limited skill. But the robots were intended to reference Norm and Cliff — that’s something no party disputed. But at no point had actors George Wendt and John Ratzenberger given permission to have their likenesses replicated like this, and while some people at the time might have thought bar animatronics were a ridiculous concept to sue over, the question of who owns an actor’s likeness remains more relevant than ever.
The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In October 2000, just months before deciding Bush v Gore, the justices ruled that the actors had a case, and they received a settlement shortly thereafter. By this point, the bars were closing down anyway, and Cheers had been off the air for the better part of a decade.
‘Nosferatu’ Genuinely Plagiarized ‘Dracula’
Today, if we tell you that the 2024 movie Nosferatu is basically just a spin on the Dracula story, you probably won’t lose any sleep over that revelation. This latest movie is a remake of a movie that’s in the public domain, and the character Dracula is naturally in the public domain as well, so that connection is just trivia, not a legal matter.
Prana-Film
In 1922, the situation was very different. German studio Prana-Film initially planned Nosferatu as a straight adaptation of Dracula — a novel that wasn’t yet in the public domain in Europe. The Bram Stoker estate told them they couldn’t do this. So, the director just changed the names around and now marketed the movie as a totally original tale of a vampire from Transylvania, the businessman who visits his castle, the vampire boating to somewhere new, etc., etc., etc.
The Stoker estate sued, reasonably enough. Less reasonably, when a German court ruled in their favor, they ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. That doesn’t sound like something courts have the power to do, but you must remember that this continent was subject to regular vampire attacks at the time and tended to overreact.
We only have the film today because some illegally spared copies found their way to the United States, where Dracula had indeed fallen into the public domain. It launched the horny fanfic industry, which remains strong to this day.
Porn Ben & Jerry’s
Speaking of horniness, in 2013, a porn studio launched a line of videos they called “Ben & Cherry’s.” They were named after flavors of the famous ice cream brand.
Ben & Jerry’s have an ice cream they call Peanut Butter Cups, and Caballero Video put out a video titled Peanut Butter D-Cups. Ben & Jerry’s have an ice cream they call Chocolate Fudge Brownie, and Caballero Video put out a video titled Chocolate Fudge Babes. Ben & Jerry’s have an ice cream they call Bossin' Cream Pie, and Caballero Video put out a video titled Boston Cream Thigh — though, with that one, the original title was so porny that any rename was superfluous.
Rodax Distributors, Unilever
Parody gets a lot of leeway in copyright law, and it’s possible that a court would have ruled that Caballero weren’t violating any trademarks. But a court blocked them temporarily, and the company then decided to give in and stop distributing the series. They were probably thankful for what publicity the story brought them, because it wasn’t easy, making traditional pornographic DVDs in the year 2013.
The Theft of Segway’s Patent
Twenty years ago, the world was convinced that the Segway was the tool of the future and would soon be transporting people wherever they went. Ten years ago, it had become clear that was untrue. Also, it turned out no one had ever thought it was true, but a few people had said very loudly that it was, to make it sound like everyone did think that. But Segway was still around, and they faced a new issue, other than public indifference: A Chinese company called Ninebot was infringing on their patents.
The subject of international patent is especially complicated. So, if we’re going to explain to you exactly what followed, we’re going to need to dig out a lot of research, starting with…
Oh, wait. Never mind. Ninebot’s parent company just addressed the matter by buying Segway. Not buying a Segway but by acquiring the entire company. Hey, that’s one way to solve any problem.
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