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Summit Entertainment Sues Owners Of Twilight.com For Trademark Infringement

Recently, Summit Entertainment, the studio behind the “Twilight” series, filed a lawsuit in Federal court against the owner of Twilight.com.

The studio is suing for copyright and trademark infringement and demanding gains, profits and advantages from the defendant.

The complaint was filed against Tom Marskon, and TM Consulting, in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California on Sept. 2, 2011.

According to the lawsuit:

“Summit learned that defendant is using the ’Twilight’ intellectual property on his website in a variety of ways, including posting links to download ‘Twilight’ recordings, posting links for unauthorized Twilight contests and fake casting calls for the ’Twilight’ motion pictures,” according to the complaint.

The studio said the site is “leading consumers to believe that they had reached the official ‘Twilight’ Motion Picture Web site.”

According to the complaint, Markson is being sued for “false designation of origin, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair competition and copyright.” The studio says they sent him two cease-and-desist letters in 2009.

Based on Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling books series, Summit has released three “Twilight” films since 2008.

Twilight.com as it exists today appears to be a pretty bland “fan” site for the movie including links back to Amazon to buy merchandise. Compare this with the official movie site.

According to Compete.com the domain gets between 11,000-36,000 monthly visitors. The owners of the domain name seem to be the original registrants of the domain, which was first registered in Feburary 1994.

There are plenty of sites for this movie which seem even worse for the studio than what twilight.com is doing, linking to sites where you can “watch the move for free” which also includes the “Twilight” in the domain:

http://www.watchtwilightonline.net/

http://www.twilight-eclipse-online.info/

Consequently, it appears that this is a case of trademark bullying and a grab for the domain with a least one more Twilight movie to come.

For more information regarding trademark or copyright please contact us directly.