You find yourself looking at a clever advertisement in a newspaper. There is a large picture of a Jeep® automobile, and dots in two colors. It’s a connect-the-dots picture! You are curious if any pictures will appear if you were to really connect the dots.
If you decide to give it a shot, turn to page 2.
If you forget about it and keep on reading, turn to page 27.
This actually happened to me and I decided to do it. It was a very clever ad. One of the pictures was a mountainscape, the other, a desert. I thought the idea of an interactive ad was very unique and helps a potential customer remember the product. It played well on the common Jeep advertising trade that a Jeep allows you to explore rugged, uncharted terrain with ease, and all in all fit very nicely with the product’s slogan- “Choose your adventure.”
Apparently, that slogan doesn’t amuse everyone…for example, Chooseco, the company who makes the Choose Your Own Adventure books, popular in the 1980s and recently revived by company founder, creator, and author R.A. Montgomery. Chooseco is suing DaimlerChrysler over the “choose your adventure” slogan Jeep is using in all of its campaigns, claiming that it is too similar to the “Choose Your Own Adventure®” trademark. The company also claims Jeep’s website has an interactive game similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure books, making Chooseco believe that Jeep is attempting to lure former fans of the book series to equate the same sense of discovery that the books have with their product.
If you believe Chooseco will win this lawsuit, turn to page 42.
If you believe Chooseco doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this thing and also didn’t even equate the Jeep slogan with the book series name until reading about this lawsuit, you think the same way I do.
So the publisher thinks that only men read their books and drive Jeeps? :mad: I really hope the publisher loses just for that. (The lawsuit itself is a blatant money-grab anyway.)
So nobody is allowed to use the terms “choose” and “adventure” in close proximity in any promotional campaign? What if the phrase was “I choose adventure” ?
Gee, I’m a little surprised everyone is unabashedly err… bashing… the publisher here. Frankly, it sounds like a pretty good case to me. Not a slam-dunk for the publisher, mind you, but not a “get this crap out of my courtroom”-style case that many posters seem to think it deserves to be.
First of all, according to the cites “Choose Your Own Adventure” is the actual name of the brand of books, not some minor and long-forgotten tag line. That’s a valuable identity and one that’s worth protecting.
Second, it appears that these books were pretty hot sellers. (I’ve never heard of them but I’m totally unfamiliar with the kids’ book market.) We’re not talking about some “publisher” who crawled out of the woodwork with a copy of a yellowed book he created with a manual typewriter and a Xerox machine in the 1970s and sold on a street corner. So, again, the book brand is a valuable identity and one that’s worth protecting.
If you believe no one would confuse the two based on the similar phrase alone, go to page 74.
If you believe a reasonable person would assume Cooseco manufactures unreliable sport utility vehicles, go to page 4.
If you believe Chooseco filed this lawsuit to rekindle surpressed memories of their silly books, go to page 75.
Page 4:
…You allow the case to move forward and give the publisher a chance to prove their case. You don’t expect them to win, but that part’s not your job. You write your decision in the manner of a Choose You Own Adventure book.
Page 74:
…You dismiss the case but warn Jeep not to use any phraseology in their ads that is similar to the books’ “If you…go to page…” format. You write your decision in the manner a Choose You Own Adventure book.
Page 75:
…You dismiss the suit and congratulate Chooseco for exploiting the free publicity. You write your decision in the manner a Choose You Own Adventure book.
I think that Choose Your Own Adventure has probably entered the realm of Kleenex and Band-Aid and other such products. It’s so recognizable that one hardly even thinks about how it’s a specific brand and not the name for a category of things. Other publishers do books in a similar format, but in the common lexicon they’re still generally called CYOA books.
So, to my way of thinking, this lawsuit is on par with Band-Aid suing Band Aid. Yes, it’s meant to make you think of the original product. No, it’s not competition or slander. It’s free publicity.
It may or may not have gone the way of Aspirin. Until it definitely has, the trademark owner has an obligation to make a defense, precisely to prevent such a development.
It’s the same thing as Mattel suing that Europop band a few years ago over the Barbie thing. Mattel lost, and they probably knew advance they were going to, but they didn’t have a choice, really. If they’d ignored it, the next violation, which might not have been so innocuous, could have been harder to defend against.
If I were the CYOA publisher, I absolutely would have filed this suit. I also would expect to have it dismissed in fairly short order. And I wouldn’t mind, because I would have achieved my objective: establishing a defense of the trademark not because I’m all that worried about automakers or other manufacturers ripping me off, but to prevent other publishers doing it. I aggressively defend against encroachment on the nebulous perimeter in order to maintain clear ownership of the primary business at the core.
That was a very good point, Cervaise. While I still don’t think the suit has a very good chance of winning, I can see that Chooseco probably should have filed the lawsuit. One of those tricky legal things where the lawsuit is silly, but for the sake of precedent, it really needs to be made.
