An interesting thing happened when deadmau5 arrived at his home yesterday: he found out that Disney was opposing his trademark filing in the United States (which he filed last year). One thing that has been remarked on in the past was deadmau5's mau5head logo being similar to Disney's iconic Mickey Mouse. Oddly enough, TMZ reported that deadmau5's lawyer, Dina LaPolt, told them that deadmau5 has trademarks filed in 30 countries. For a truly global company, it would appear that Disney isn't tripping off of the mau5head trademark worldwide as much as they are in the United States.
As you can see in the above tweets, deadmau5 is basically telling Disney to lawyer up, as he's not backing down with his trademark filing.
The timing of this report is actually interesting, given a recent press release we received last week. Do you remember when deadmau5 questioned a Beamz ad that threw shots at him with someone dressed up in headgear similar to the mau5head? In a release titled "The Man in the Mouse Mask is Revealed," they announced some 10 months after the commercial originally aired (and was ultimately taken down) that the "man in the mouse mask" was XUVO founder Killian Wells (XUVO is "a product inspired by and created for the EDM community," "the world's first ultraviolet blacklight reactive cocktail and energy drink mixer tablet"). Not sure why we were supposed to care now (I have a sneaking suspicion this had more to do with getting people word on XUVO than shedding any real light on the controversy), but the one thing that sticks out is their reasoning behind deadmau5's claims of trademark infringement being null and void:
"The spot didn't imply an endorsement and the character could've easily been Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse, or Chuck E. Cheese," he argues. "The front of the Deadmau5 head is unique, but to claim IP of a generic mouse silhouette is really grasping for straws."
So if we all agree that the mau5head logo is unique (at least unique enough to successfully get trademarks filed in 30 countries already), and—aside from being a mouse head—it doesn't look like Mickey Mouse, does Disney's opposition truly hold water? That'll be for the courts to decipher, but it is interesting how these things work, depending on what side of the fence you're on.
