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December 2019
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Chooseco Chooses An Adventure In Bullying Indie Game Devs Over Trademark

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Earlier this year, after Netflix released an iteration of its Black Mirror series entitled Bandersnatch, which allowed the viewer to choose their own story path through the narrative, the company behind the famed Choose Your Own Adventure books from our childhood sued. Chooseco, armed with a trademark registration for "Choose your own adventure", claimed that Bandersnatch infringed on that trademark, first because the film has a nod of homage to the literary series within the script, and second simply because many in the public compared the film with the books of their youth. Meanwhile, thanks to the renewed attention that Netflix gave CYOA books -- for FREE! -- , Chooseco inked a deal with Amazon to create CYOA style narratives for the Alexa device.That success hasn't stopped Chooseco's bullying ways, however. Recently, itch.io's leadership has publicly warned indie game developers to stop describing their games as choose your own adventures on the site after Chooseco issued several takedowns of games that did so. In case you were concerned that the facts before the public didn't perfectly convey how absurd this all is, never fear:

Itch.io founder Leaf Corcoran told developers about the takedowns this afternoon. “Warning to any devs using the phrase ‘choose your own adventure’ to describe their games, Chooseco is issuing takedown notices,” he wrote on Twitter. Corcoran tells The Verge that the games include Purrfect Apawcalypse, an “apocalyptic dog dating choose your own adventure game”; a “choose your own dating sim text adventure” game called It’s a Date; an unofficial GameBoy game called Choose Your Own Adventure GB; and New Yorker writer Luke Burns’ A Series of Choose Your Own Adventure Stories Where No Matter What You Choose You Are Immediately Killed by a Werewolf, whose plot is self-explanatory.
Clearly, these indie games with mere descriptions in their summaries and/or game titles are a grave threat to the Chooseco empire. After all, what member of the public could possibly stave off confusion over a video game being accurately described as involving a choice in adventure without naturally assuming that this must be from the same company as the books of their childhood?This is all stupid on many levels. Chooseco's trademark is at least partially descriptive. I know that's true, because some of the games that have been the victim's of this bullying have only used the trademark in their games'...you know...descriptions. That feels about as open and shut an answer as these questions tend to have. Add to that the fact that literature and Amazon Alexa narratives aren't the same as video games and I would question whether these are even in the same market as Chooseco products. Finally, I would also question whether there is a single iota of potential public confusion to consider here.And, to be clear, the end result of this bullying thus far is part mockery by other publishers and part simply ignoring Chooseco entirely.
Mainstream publishers have found clever ways to get around the trademark. A Gravity Falls branching-choice book, for example, is billed as a “Select Your Own Choose-Venture” novel. And you can’t officially tag a game as “choose your own adventure” on Itch.io; it’s automatically converted to “interactive fiction.”Even so, an Itch.io search for “choose your own adventure” still turns up a lot of results. (The common abbreviation “CYOA” also apparently hasn’t triggered any notices.) It’s a widely accepted informal genre name, and Itch.io is a platform that favors offbeat, often free-of-charge games from independent developers.
Your bullying has resulted in mere mockery and dismissive waves. Turn to page 26 if you'd like to go to your room and think about what you've done, or turn to page 77 if instead you want to continue to make the world hate you with your bullying.

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Marvin Gaye Family Not Done With Pharrell Just Yet: Bring Him Back To Court Claiming Perjury

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The Blurred Lines lawsuit is the case that just keeps on giving... if the gift you're looking for is legal shenanigans and ridiculous situations. As you'll recall, that was the case in which Marvin Gaye's family suggested that because the Pharrell/Robin Thicke song "Blurred Lines" paid homage to Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up" with a similar groove, that it was infringing on Gaye's copyright. The whole thing was crazy -- and somehow the court bought it. Despite there not being any actual copying of any copyright-protected content, just the mere similarity of feeling in the song is enough to infringe.This has created quite a frenzy of nonsense, with artists now afraid to even mention their inspirations, lest they get sued, and sued again for every song they release. The situation has gotten so insane that even the RIAA has stepped in to say that perhaps copyright has gone too far in protecting works. Yes, the RIAA said that copyright may be protecting too much. This is pigs flying, snow in hell, cats and dogs living together, madness.And, believe it or not, the original case apparently is not fully over yet. During the original case, Pharrell gave a deposition claiming that he didn't intend to copy Marvin Gaye:

"I did not go in the studio with the intention of making anything feel like, or to sound like, Marvin Gaye."
But... in a recent GQ published video interview between Pharrell and famed music producer Rick Rubin, Pharrell made an off-hand comment about this same issue. Throughout the interview, he talks about "channeling" other artists when he's in the studio.
Then somewhere along the line he mentions the Blurred Lines mess, by saying (around 28 minutes into the interview):
Pharrell: But I think for the most part, what we always try to do was reverse engineer the songs that did something to us emotionally and figure out where the mechanism is in there, and as I said to you before, try to figure out if we can build a building that doesn't look the same but makes you feel the same way. I did that in Blurred Lines and got myself in trouble.Rubin: Ridiculously.Pharrell: Stevie Wonder told me, he said, 'you gotta get the right musicologists in there because juries don't understand -- it's very technical what you've done.'Rubin: Because the song is nothing like the songPharrell: Nope, but the feeling was.Rubin: But the feeling is not something you can copyright.Pharrell: No, you can't copyright a feeling. All salsa songs sound pretty much the same.Rubin: Yes. And reggae songs. Any genre.Pharrell: 100 percent.Rubin: Trap music sounds relatively similar.Pharrell: But here's the difference. What we failed-- And it hurt my feelings. 'Cause I would never take anything from anyone. And that really set me back.... But I was really hurt, because what I realized all too late was that what he was trying to tell me was that I needed to do was use my gift to make music, to reverse engineer the disparity between the truth and the jury's uneducated opinions. And I say that, because rayon and silk feel the same, but we understand that there's a clear difference. And that was what happened.Rubin: Yeah.Pharrell: Like, I really made it feel so much like it, that people were like, oh, I hear the same thing.
And, so, in a new filing by the Gaye Estate (first noted by THREsq), they're claiming that Pharrell perjured himself in his deposition by saying that he had no intention to channel Gaye:
In the November 4, 2019 Interview, among other things, Williams admits the following:
(1) in creating a new song, he often tries to reverse engineer an older song that did something to us emotionally, so that he can figure out where the mechanism is in [the original song], and build a building that doesn't look the same but makes us feel the same way, and that he did that in 'Blurred Lines' and I got myself in trouble; and(2) he actually did too good of a job in this reverse engineering when it came to Got To and Blurred: I really made it ['Blurred'] feel so much like it ['Got To'], that people were like, oh, I hear the same thing.
As discussed further below, these admissions are irreconcilable with Williams's repeated, sworn testimony in this action that: neither Got To nor Marvin Gaye ever entered his mind while creating Blurred, that he did not try to make Blurred feel like Got To or sound like Marvin Gaye, and that when creating music Williams looks into oblivion. We look into that which does not exist.
Hilariously, the filing tries to make sure that the court does not pay attention to other parts of the interview -- notably, the long section about how it's ridiculous to argue that you can copyright a "feeling."
As a matter of introduction and clarity, and to avoid all doubt so there is no misunderstanding about what this Motion is not about: this Motion is not about whether Williams and Robin Thicke (Thicke) committed copyright infringement with respect to Got To. This Motion is also not about Williams's very public pronouncements in this Court, in the media, in the November 4, 2019 Interview, and elsewhere that one cannot copyright a feeling, that all music within a genre supposedly sounds the same, and his belief that Blurred and Got To are not compositionally the same (one supposedly being rayon and one being silk according to Williams). The jury, this Court, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have all spoken on those issues.
The whole case is a mess, but this part of the dispute, including this silly claim of perjury, is just an attempt to get even more money out of Pharrell, this time in seeking attorneys' fees for the Gaye family's lawyers.And, of course, all it will really do is remind musicians to never credit their sources, to never talk about their process, and to hinder future musicians for years, if not decades. All for an extra buck.

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posted at: 12:00am on 12-Dec-2019
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