Well, it’s perfectly understandable, really. If you were running a major porn studio offering everything from Debbie Does Dallas…Again to group sex cams…
Well, you’d hardly want your product associated with anything quite so distasteful as a mobile phone – would you?
So that’s the reason that Vivid Entertainment has written a ‘cease and desist’ letter to HTC America, demanding that it stop using the Vivid trademark.
“It has come to our attention that your company has been making use of the Vivid Marks in association with the marketing and sale of a wireless device that your company advertises can surf online websites and is ‘built to entertain, with movies and shows’ on a 4.5-inch screen,” writes Vivid’s attorney, Mark S Hoffman, to HTC America chief executive Peter Chou.
“Such use of the Vivid Marks creates the false impression that your company and your company’s products are affiliated, connected, or associated with and or sanctioned by Vivid Entertainment and is likely to cause confusion amongst consumers.”
Hoffman says that if HTC America doesn’t stop using the trademark by next Monday, “our client will have no alternative but to pursue all legal remedies”.
“For the past 27 years Vivid has worked hard to protect and build its brand,” says Steven Hirsch, Vivid’s founder and co-chairman.
“We believe this is a clear infringement and will use all legal remedies available to protect our trademark.”
HTC’s other phone models include the Desire and the Sensation, possibly supporting Vivid’s thesis that there is a sort of porn theme going on.
The company announced the Vivid just over a week ago, particularly proud of the fact that it incorporates the latest Android update. “HTC knows how excited our fans are to get their hands on Google’s latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich,” it said.
That sentence sounded perfectly innocuous, at the time…
