Judge: Unless you’re San Diego Comic-Con, you can’t call yourself a “Comic Con”

For decades, the San Diego Comic-Con has been the world’s premiere pop culture convention, attracting genre fans from all over the globe. As sci-fi, fantasy, superheroes, and all other things nerdy have grown more popular, a great many other conventions have popped up in SDCC’s wake; the Quad Cities Comic Con in Illinois, the Rose City Comic Con in Portland, the Space Coast Comic Con in Florida, the New York Comic Con in NYC, and so on. Now, thanks to a ruling in the U.S. District Court of Southern California, they could all be in danger…of having to change their name.

Here’s what happened: Bryan Brandenburg and Daniel Farr run the Salt Lake Comic Con, a pop culture convention in Utah. Back in 2014, San Diego Comic-Con sued those two and their company, Dan Farr Productions (DFP), for trademark infringement, claiming that by promoting Salt Lake Comic Con, they were trading on the notoriety of the “Comic Con” name in violation of trademark law. A jury sided with SDCC in late 2017, and awarded it $20,000 in damages. But SDCC went further and asked for a permanent injunction that would prevent DFP from using the “Comic Con” name in the future. In his ruling, Judge Anthony J. Battaglia gave SDCC what it asked for, ordered Brandenburg and Farr to paying a cool $4 million in legal fees, and seemed kinda annoyed with the defendants:

"At every opportunity, DFP has repeated, re-argued, and recycled arguments already briefed by both parties and analyzed and ruled on by the court. This type of wasteful litigation tactic forced SDCC to expend extra, unnecessary legal fees and drove this court to squander already limited judicial resources."

Battaglia took particular exception with Brandenburg and Farr “[a]stonishingly” citing the Oxford English Dictionary definitely of the word “con” in their arguments over and over again, even after the court had put that particular issue to bed.

The short of it is that the Salt Lake Comic Con will have to find a new name and quick; the convention goes down in early September. May we suggest “Salt Lake City Comics and Such Spectacular”?

Now, although this decision doesn’t set a legal precedent outside the Southern District of California, you have to wonder is other Comic Cons around the country aren’t feeling a little nervous. Will SDCC come after them next? Will any cons try to get ahead of this and change their names preemptively? We’ll see. It’s possible that other courts won’t feel as strongly about the issues as Battaglia — “Comic Con” is a pretty generic name — or maybe the defendants in future cases just won’t tick off the judge as much.

To stay up to date on everything Game of Thrones, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Watch Game of Thrones or Succession for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels

h/t Deadline