In case you forget the basic history of this strange case, after Netflix released their interactive episode of Black Miorror in 2018, they were promptly sued by the publisher of the original Choose Your Own Adventure book series, Chooseco LLC who owns the trademark.
Now that legal saga is over.
On Monday, at a status conference before U.S District Court Judge William Sessions III, both parties revealed they had reached a settlement.
While terms weren’t released, the parties did tell the judge of one slightly unusual condition — the judge’s Feb. 2020 opinion denying Netflix’s dismissal motion would have to be vacated. Sessions agreed to the demand. He chose to pretend he never questioned whether Netflix’s film was explicitly misleading.
Netflix put up a First Amendment defense, but the judge didn’t believe it was appropriate to dismiss the case prematurely without exploring factual issues in discovery.
Apparently, that fact-finding led to some deeper truth concerning the wisdom of further litigation. Neither side was immediately available to comment about terms. According to trademark records, Chooseco continues to maintain its mark, and in fact, has recently applied for new classes for the signature phrase including this month for downloadable animated video recordings featuring multiple choice endings.
via: THR
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Idiotic. Back in the 1980s, I took a programming class in college (LISP), and our project was to create an interactive game. In fact, any game where you have a choice of doing “A” or “B” is a “choose your own adventure” game. Ridiculous lawsuit, and shame on NetFlix for caving in! (They should have just bought out this idiot company!) John V. Karavitis
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