| happydolphin said: Okay, you may have misunderstood the situation. There are two situations at hand. 1) The headline accusation: "based on violations of the Lanham Act, misappropriation, breach of contract and tortious interference with a contractual relationship". 2) The supporting violations: "The company went on to allege: 'We invested significant resources in bringing the Kevin Butler character to life and he's become an iconic personality directly associated with PlayStation products over the years.'
'Use of the Kevin Butler character to sell products other than those from PlayStation misappropriates Sony's intellectual property, creates confusion in the market and causes damage to Sony.'
So item 1 has to do with violation of a contract and of an intellectual property (lanham act, misappropriation). The argument against that is should Jerry Lambert scrape off his face? The answer is no. What else about him makes him Kevin Butler? The maneurisms, but are those even purely Sony's creation, or did he use those maneurisms before? He used them with Geiko. What about his likeness (suit and tie)? Already used. The thing you're talking about relates to item 2, where Sony makes a support accusation saying (in loose terms) that associating with competing products confuses consumers. Well this would be true if it were Kevin Butler playing Wii in the Bridgestone commercial, but it's not, it's Jerry Lambert. Bridgestone could be using the likeness of Kevin Butler to push the promotion of a video game console promotion FOR bridgestone, but that would not be against the law. Had Jerry Lambert played Kevin Butler and done that, that would have been against the law. |
Personally, I don't know enough about typecasting in copywrite law, but that is generally why a non-compete clause is so prevalent. It doesn't matter if Jerry Lambert was playing the Wii; he was in a commercial with a Wii in it, with the Wii as a promotion, which in turn advertises the Wii and Mario Kart. This ultimately benefits Nintendo, which is a direct competitor of Sony. If it was not present, I do not see Sony being able to win this lawsuit, so it's a wait and see situation. I would say it's safe to assume that this is a contract violation.
The supporting violations sound all well and good, but they are simply too vague and more an explanation for the move they are making. As I mentioned, Bridgestone's actions will result in a little trouble should Sony win, which in this case would be a result of the tortious interference. Misappropriation could either refer to the use of Kevin Butler or Sony resources, which I do not think can be proved. I don't really fully comprehend the extent of the Lanham Act, but I would imagine in this situation it would refer to the misappropriation, so it would just be a fancy way of saying the same thing twice.
Sony clearly wants to win a copywrite infringement case, as that gets them more money, but I highly doubt they would have pursued such a claim had there not been a contract violation. More of a two-birds, one stone kind of deal, where the other bird by itself is worth more, but not worth the stone if they missed. Either way, a contract violation would be very damaging to Jerry Lambert's career (it could end it completely).
