(This was in our local paper today..interesting.....)
Hoboken's Cake Boss will have to find a new name; judge grants temporary injunction to software firm that marketed a CakeBoss program two years before TV show
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
By KATIE COLANERI
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
HOBOKEN - Head Cake Honcho? Cake King? Capo di Torta? Somehow none of these names captures Hoboken's beloved baker Buddy Valastro quite like "Cake Boss," as he is known to over a million TV viewers.
But, as of the end of the show's third season, The Learning Channel (TLC) will be forced to rename the popular reality-TV series featuring Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop, its owner and his famiglia.
A federal court judge in Seattle, Wash., barred Discovery Communications, TLC's parent company, from using "Cake Boss" for the show's title and associated merchandise in a July 16 court order, pending a future trial.
Judge Richard A. Jones granted a preliminary injunction in favor of Masters Software, Inc., the Seattle-based company suing TLC, which sells a business management software for professional cake bakers called CakeBoss.
Co-owners Kelley and Jon Masters began selling CakeBoss in 2007, two years before "Cake Boss" premiered on TLC in April 2009.
The Masters told the court they alerted Discovery the day it announced the series in March 2009, but the network declined to change the name, claiming there was no way anyone could confuse the show with the software.
Since the show first aired, Kelley Masters said in court, she has received numerous e-mails from "Cake Boss" fans and requests for custom cakes from Carlo's Bakery, a nuisance that also brought increased traffic to their website,
www.CakeBoss.com.
In his order, Judge Jones acknowledged the Masters' potential to "rise with the 'Cake Boss' tide."
However, he added that granted its multi-million-dollar investment in the series, TLC could have conducted a simple search for the words and found Masters' product.
"Contrary to Discovery's implicit contention, there is no 'television shows always win' rule in the Ninth Circuit, as an examination of the cases reveals," Jones said in the 24-page order.
A spokesman from TLC said the company is unable to comment on ongoing litigation.
"Prior to this order we felt helpless in defending our small business against the actions of a corporation as big as Discovery Communications," said the couple in a statement on their website. "We are confident that justice will now prevail."
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PS - you better change the title of your thread...you may get sued.
