A judge earlier this month ruled against a copyright-infringement lawsuit by Roxbury Entertainment, which owns the rights to the “Route 66” television program from the 1960s, against Penthouse Entertainment for producing a pornographic film by the same title.
The ruling can be found here. To summarize, the judge ruled that the mere use of the title “Route 66” wasn’t enough to infringe on Roxbury’s copyright:
The relevant question, therefore, is [“]whether the [product] would confuse [consumers]…. In answering that question, we keep in mind … that the mere use of trademark alone cannot suffice to make such use explicitly misleading.[“] Here, there is nothing to indicate that there is any risk of Defendants’ use of the mark “duping” consumers into thinking they are buying a product sponsored by, or in any way affiliated with, Plaintiff or the 1960s television series in which it owns rights.
I surmised 18 months ago that the lawsuit wouldn’t prevail due to First Amendment reasons. But the ruling about copyright infringement made Penthouse’s defense of its film even more of a slamdunk than I ever suspected.
Also, I thought Roxbury’s lawsuit was ill-conceived. Porn films are cranked out by the truckload every year, and the “Route 66” flick would have quickly sunk into obscurity like all the others. Instead, Roxbury’s lawsuit gave the film and Penthouse a lot of publicity they likely didn’t deserve.
(Hat tip: Volokh Conspiracy and Peter Black, aka PeterBlackQUT)