Remember a certain lawsuit issued by a certain dead rockstar‘s widow against a certain fan-organized tribute festival? As it turns out, said widow just lost the appeal. Robert who mailed in the story, says:
Sorry, currently only available in german. But the message is simple: GZ had appealed against the negative decision from some time ago, this appeal has now been denied, which completes the lawsuit in favor of Zappanale.
From my understanding, the Zappanale festival even retains the right to use FZ’s trademark imperial in its promotional material.
Follow-up!
This just in from Thomas Dippel, Zappanale Head Honcho:
Remarkable is this:
Auf die Widerklage des Beklagten zu 1. wird die Gemeinschaftsmarke der Klägerin 001933944 “ZAPPA” für ab dem 01. August 2007 verfallen erklärt.
Which means something like: Since 08/01/2007 the trademark “Zappa” is declared expired.
Th.
Hallo KUR,
the Article in english.
http://www.zappanale.de/zappanale/en/news/191-zappanale-siegt-ueber-zappa-family-trust.html
Cheers
Why not spend more time, energy, and money on new vault releases instead of lawsuits?!?!?!? Menage a trois anyone?
[quote comment=”11215″]Why not spend more time, energy, and money on new vault releases instead of lawsuits?!?!?!? Menage a trois anyone?[/quote]
Maybe now that it is over they will!
Wow the Zappa copyright is expired in .de. I guess this is another read it and weep moment. I hear a Trendy tear somewhere.
Does anyone know how this compares to U.S. copyright laws? I would think the imperial would still be trademarked in the U.S.
Ist das nicht unheimlich?
Aber beklecker nicht das Sofa.
Toll!
Iss’ doch toll!
I could not have heard happier news, Barry. Though I seriously doubt this decision will stop the ZFT and her draconian (some say, Republican) tactics in California and North America any time soon. Any one willing to attempt to copyright or trademark a pre-existing style of moustache, or one’s last name (which many, many others share) reminds me of those 19th century rubber barons more interested in the acquisition of wealth by any means, and to hell with any consequences…
…and wouldn’t all that money, time and effort have been better spent serving the purposes of the composer and releasing “Dance Me This” which was a finished work of his… or working on the release of other works in the Synclaver or getting an Orchestra to play Sinsiter Footwear and release it or a Quartet to record “None Of The Above” and release it.
No Gail thinks protecting the copyright of a stupid moustache logo is more important… she really serves the purposes of the composers legacy so well!!
This is awesome. Good on Germany for having a sane and logical legal system. Didn’t they declare Scientology not a religion a few years back? That was a big one and I have no problem comparing Gail’s antics to the antics of a draconian money & power obsessed evil cult.
[quote comment=”11311″]Didn’t they declare Scientology not a religion a few years back?[/quote]
The Scientology organization is under investigation in Germany. Their status as being a religion or not is still legally unclear. Most court decisions say that they are not a religion but some courts acknowledge that they also deserve some of the consitutional protection of religious freedom.
Scientology is not recognised as a religion in the UK, Canada, France or Germany as far as I am aware. Incidently i watched some clips from Battlefield Earth on youtube yesterday in the hope it might be one of those films in the ‘Cheepnis’ category. No, nope and nae. Even the trailer was enough to make me feel slightly nauseous and give me a stabbing pain somewhere in the left hemisphere of my brain…