Curious what that might be? Well, you've come to the right place. The first two-issue storyline to not be reprinted came from 2000AD #71-72 (1978). During their trek through the post-apocalyptic wasteland that most of America was, Dredd and company ended up in a town caught up in a turf war between two rival armies...
Our clown gives us background, and Dredd deduces the rest...
So, yeah, a little bit of trademark infringement there, especially as Ronald and The King murder and behead a bunch of people while spouting actual company ad slogans of the day. It's not too surprising the lawyers were unleashed.The second incident occurred in issues #77-78 (1978), as Dredd encounters a bunch of freaks...
Yeah, when you have the character look exactly like the Jolly Green Giant, spout his catch-phrase, identify himself as the Jolly Green Giant, and then go on a killing rampage, you just might be infringing on trademarks in a way that will invite legal action. And I won't go into the Colonel's "special recipe"...ewwww.So several of the companies sued, the publisher settled out of court, and part of that settlement was the those stories would never, ever be reprinted.
Lesson: Judge Dredd might be The Law, but even he can't mess with corporate lawyers!!
4 comments:
Excellent research! It's amazing that IPC published those stories in the first place. Surely a tiny tweak to the characters and phrases and they could have claimed satire?
I think they could claim satire either way, but a comic book publisher isn't going to have deep enough pockets to keep going to court over this when compared to those corporations.
Mart--perhaps they thought they were so small they could get away with it. Or perhaps they were just dumb...
Siskoid--I'm not as hip to the British law involved in 1978, but in the US the right to "nasty satire" wasn't really given sure footing until Hustler v. Falwell was decided by the Supremes in 1988. The big fish would usually just let satire go prior to that, but they could make cases for libel & defamation (as Falwell did...) Throw in the damages from trademark & copyright infringement, and IPC was on murky legal ground at best.
All they had to do was change the brands slightly, so readers still got the reference but they couldn't be sued. 2000AD has a long history of satire, I wonder if anyone else has tried to sue them?
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