Comments | cagekitten: Why can't the Mercury use the name "Vampire Ball"?

cagekitten

Why can't the Mercury use the name "Vampire Ball"?

Dec 13, 2010 14:12

I noticed that the person who runs the Vampire Ball in Portland asked the Mercury not to call their New Year's Eve party a Vampire Masquerade New Year's Eve Ball. So the Merc changed the name to just Masquerade Ball. There goes the fun vampire theme ( Read more... )

Comments 5

drkabyss11 December 13 2010, 22:55:38 UTC

It's the same reason you don't want people using Pole for the Soul.

cagekitten December 14 2010, 02:08:48 UTC

That's different. My friends helped me come up with that name. It's original and we created it and we were first and I paid $800 to own it. But there have been masquerade balls and vampire balls for years. There still are all over the country, including New Orleans which is famous for it. How can you claim ownership of something you didn't invent and were not the first to use?

reddheart December 14 2010, 04:06:54 UTC

I see a bit of apples and oranges in this. Pole for the Soul is the name of a business, and a name that Kitten has paid to have exclusive rights to use. She therefore can legally enforce a cease and desist order if she needed to in order to protect the use of that name to only her purposes.

While I see that the organizer wants to protect her "brand" of event as it were, unless they have copyrighted things, then really, the Mercury is probably choosing a name change in the interest of civility between the communities. However, if the Merc wants a vampire masquerade event, they can still -have- one, just differently named. Likewise, people attending can dress themselves to the originally intended theme. Portland has zero say in that regard.

drkabyss11 December 14 2010, 06:13:39 UTC

It's an issue of branding. Yes, Pole for the Soul, is something you invented. But just like Nike didn't create the words "Just Do It" They have coined it and made it their own. They now owns right to it.
I am not saying that they own the rights to the title, but a large number of people associate that title with that event. I know they are three hours away, but from what I have experienced, the goth scene is really mixed all along the west coast.
I personally chuckled when I read the first publicity for the event. I looked for any association with the organizers from PDX. There wasn't any.
In the end, I agree with laragoth.

(The comment has been removed)

cagekitten December 14 2010, 02:09:54 UTC

Exactly. Why can't she be the Portland Vampire Ball and why can't we have a Seattle Vampire Ball?