Benson Boone really doesn’t want bootleggers selling knock-off merch outside shows on his current US tour. Or at least his merchandise business partner, Sony Music’s Ceremony Of Roses, doesn’t want fans buying the knock-offs when they could be spending their hard earned cash on official Benson Boone products being sold inside the venues.
In a new legal filing with the courts in New York, Ceremony Of Roses notes that Boone is playing the city’s Madison Square Garden next week and “defendants will sell unauthorised, infringing t-shirts, jerseys, caps and/or other merchandise” bearing Boone’s trademark protected brand “in the vicinity of the concert, before, during and after his performance, and at subsequent concerts during the tour”.
In case the judge isn’t aware of Boone’s pop success, the legal filing explains that he has “a decidedly strong and loyal following among those who attend popular music concerts and listen to popular music”.
He has “appeared in concerts at major arenas and stadiums in the US”, it adds, and “has been seen and heard in concert by millions of popular music enthusiasts”. Some of whom, presumably, are sufficiently enthusiastic to also want to own a Boone beanie or some other similarly branded tat.
The Sony merchandiser would also like the court to note that it “possesses the exclusive right to utilise all federally registered trademarks, service marks, likenesses, logos and other indicia” associated with Benson Boone – ‘indicia’ being a posh word for “distinctive marks”.
Or alternatively it can mean a graphic on an envelope to confirm postage has already been paid the US Postal Service, though – unless Boone fans are massively into letter sending – presumably Ceremony Of Roses is using the more generic definition.
Either way, the bootleggers are infringing those rights with their unofficial Boone merch in a way that will “likely cause confusion among prospective purchasers”, the legal filing argues. Plus, the merchandiser insists, “the infringing merchandise that defendants sell is generally of inferior quality”. Yeah, maybe.
Ceremony Of Roses doesn’t actually know who it is that is selling all this knock-off Boone tat, as a result filing its lawsuit against John Doe and XYZ Company.
But it wants the court to issue an injunction banning the sale of unofficial Boone merch and ordering US marshals and local police forces “to seize and impound any and all infringing merchandise which the defendants attempt to sell or distribute within or in the vicinity of the artist’s concerts on the tour”.
