Netflix has settled a lawsuit over its interactive special Bandersnatch. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix announced the deal with Choose Your Own Adventure book publisher Chooseco on Monday. The settlement ends a bitter legal fight between Netflix and Chooseco, which claimed the streaming video platform had infringed its trademark.
Chooseco sued Netflix in early 2019 after the release of Bandersnatch, a branching-path film about a game developer who’s obsessed with a “choose your own adventure” (but not necessarily Choose Your Own Adventure) book. Chooseco is known for aggressively defending its trademark against other companies and even small game developers, and it claimed Netflix was unlawfully using the name. Netflix responded with a counterattack, asking a court to invalidate the Choose Your Own Adventure trademark as a generic term.
The settlement’s terms aren’t public. But it seems that along with ending a legal headache for Netflix, it maintains Chooseco’s control over the Choose Your Own Adventure trademark. That’s a disappointment for anyone who wanted an actual ruling on the term’s legal status.
