Business News Legal

Deadmau5 reaches settlement with Disney over trademark dispute

By | Published on Tuesday 23 June 2015

deadmau5

Joel Zimmerman, aka Deadmau5, and Disney have “amicably resolved their dispute” over the producer’s attempt to trademark his mouse head logo, a legal rep has confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.

As previously reported, Disney lodged its opposition to Zimmerman’s then over a year old trademark application in September last year. The company argued that the existence of two logos featuring mice with big ears in the world would confuse everyone. The producer and his legal team pointed out that he had been using the logo, based on his on-stage headgear, for almost a decade without issue.

The producer then responded with his own lawsuit against Disney, after noticing that the company had put a clip from one of its TV shows featuring his music on YouTube. While the music had been licensed for TV broadcast, it was not licensed for subsequent online use. “Let’s test a theory. It takes em ten years to oppose a trademark, let’s see how long it takes em to take down a video”, Zimmerman tweeted at the time. Fairly quickly, it turned out.

Since then, behind the scenes negotiations have clearly continued, which has resulted in this amicable settlement. Exact details have not been revealed yet, but Disney will apparently remove its opposition of the application.

The news comes less than a week after Zimmerman went needlessly legal with a comedy musical playing at the Toronto Fringe next month, called ‘Deadmouse: The Musical’.



READ MORE ABOUT: |