Bon jovi sueing a covers band?

Oh for God's sake *headdesk*.

It really can't be Jon doing that personally, right?....Right? o.o

Loads of different tribute bands use the smirk logo FFS!

And if it was just about the logo, why'd they have to change their name? Surely they could just remove the heart/dagger image and be done with it?

The whole point of tribute bands is that they use alterations of recognisable images to emphasise the act they are paying tribute to. The only thing I can think of is that it may possibly be related to the BJ Hard Rock Cafe signature brand that has been released with the heart/dagger combo but it's obscure if it is and still doesn't explain why the band have been forced into a name change.

From the excerpts included in the article, that sounds like a very standard "cease & desist" letter. This is normally the first volley in a trademark infringement dispute. Most of the time, the person/business doing the infringing doesn't even realize they might be doing something wrong. The letter lets them know that the rightful owner of the mark is aware of what they're doing, wants them to stop and gives them the chance to do so BEFORE legal action commences. If the recipient of the letter doesn't agree that they're infringing, they can ignore the demand in the letter. They should then prepare for a suit to be filed against them.

The reason for all this is because it is up to the owner of intellectual property to protect the trademark, copyright or patent. There's no police force out there watching for infringers and trotting them off to jail. If the owner of a trademark does not defend his/her mark zealously, the mark is weakened and at some point won't be upheld as a valid mark any longer.

But why the name change then? It doesn't make sense?

I agree, when I read the article it seemed a little misleading as their was no mention that any legal action was imminent except in the exaggerated title of the story.

Having said that though, are they going to take on every single tribute band that uses a logo. They'll be very busy! To be honest, the actual heart/dagger is not exactly unique anyway. People have been getting tattoos and tee-shirts of things 'very similar' to that design for decades so if the tribute act altered the design slightly so that it wasn't a carbon copy, I can't see the company having a leg to stand on as the 'official' logo is based on a million other designs already in existence.

have you EVER heard of ANY tribute band to be sued by the original act??? Not even Paul McCartney or Courtney Love would do that, but hey, it's Jon Bon Jovi. As we're used to, in the end, it's all about the music, isn't it?

I doubt they're out to kill off the tribute bands. I haven't heard about Jovi going after them before, but you'd know more about that than I would. If I had to guess, I'd say something probably brought this particular band to their attention. Maybe something like this -
http://www.christylichtenstein.com/b...magazine.shtml

Jon does like to protect the image, after all.

He's probably jealous of their hair.

Disclaimer: Please note that this was a joke and do not sue me or our band as a result. It was meant to be taken in good humour.

Sure . . . he was checking out their hair in the Hustler spread. Yeah. Right.

First off, who wrote that article? An angry 14 year old on her myspace?
As for the legal claim itself, it doesn't make much sense to me. There are a lot of Jovi Tribute bands that use logos/names/etc. similarly (many of which much closer to home). Methinks this particular band did something else (The Hustler spread?) that piqued the band's lawyers ire. We'll have to see. I still think it's a dickish move either way, but I doubt it means the band is going to start going after Tribs, as there are much bigger, more well known ones that haven't been targeted.

Yeah, it does make sense that they must have offended them in some way to have legal threats made against them. Still pretty harsh but having said that, if it's what you've built your life around for the last 25 years and it's been successful, you can understand them wanting to protect it to some degree. We as onlookers don't know the full story so...