Since when can you be sued for using a font? The Vandals, an L.A. based punk band, learned the answer to this question when they parodied Variety’s iconic logo for their 2004 album “Hollywood Potato Chip.” The word Variety, or a newspaper image was nowhere to be found. The Vandals weren’t mocking Variety in any way. The album cover merely used a font similar to Variety’s logo, as an example of Hollywood-ism. Perhaps if they had used the Hollywood sign’s Helvetica font instead, they might have got away with it. But Variety sent them a cease-and-desist letter claiming trademark infringement.

At their own expense, the Vandals had the cover replaced with one that didn’t use the offending font. Everything was hunky-dory until March 24th when the Vandals were hit with a lawsuit filed in the Delaware courts. According to The Wrap, Henry Horbaczewski, counsel for Variety’s owner said: “We sued them, and they accepted a settlement agreement in which they promised to stop misusing our mark, because we wanted to stop the misuse, not their money. They then ignored their agreement.”

Here’s the problem, the Vandals changed the art. But copies of the old cover art are floating around somewhere on the net, which is nigh impossible to redact. In fact, the very article I linked to shows the old and new covers. Variety isn’t willing to reveal where this infringement took place. So this is essentially a nuisance/intimidation suit, the kind meant to squeeze money from some soft targets who can ill afford an extensive legal battle that they would probably win. Since lawsuits are usually unpredictable, most people settle. Which is something sue happy sharks have known for years. That’s why there are so many frivolous lawsuits in the land. Usually it’s individuals going after companies for some coin. (more…)

You can tell a corporation is in trouble when they begin threatening legal action against smaller companies without any evidence.  You can tell they’re in serious trouble when they won’t even tell their targets what they’ve done wrong.

Apparently, Variety is in serious trouble.  On March 24, 2010, the sinking publication filed a lawsuit against the punk rock band The Vandals [Ed. note: Vandals' bassist Joe Escalante is a BH contributor]  for allegedly using their trademark in an album cover some years back.  There’s only one problem – that issue had already been settled back in 2005, with The Vandals agreeing not to use anything similar to the trademark.  Since then, The Vandals haven’t used the trademark in any way, shape or form. 
 
So what’s a struggling publication to do?  How about finding random websites in different places, then accusing The Vandals of having posted the old trademarked material there and leaving it up purposefully, without any evidence to back up such claims?

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