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Friday, December 16, 2005

Every Christmas Story Ever Sued

Posted by on December 16 at 11:29 AM

Wing-It, an improv-heavy Seattle theater company, seems to be a litigation magnet. Last year, the Space Needle sent threatening cease-and-desist letters because of a logo for a show that sorta kinda looked like the S doodle between “space” and “needle”:

space needle.gif

Now Wing-It is getting letters from an Orlando Shakespeare company for its original Christmas show EveryXMasStoryEverTold, which sounds too close to the Lowndes Shakespeare Center’s Every Christmas Story Every Told (And Then Some…) for comfort.

Andrew McMasters from Wing-It says it’s a case of “parallel thinking.” Both companies performed the ever-popular Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) and independently decided to give Christmas stories a similar warming-over. “We can’t afford a legal battle,” McMasters says. “So we’re asking our audiences for ideas.”

Suggestions for new names have included: EveryXMasStoryEverToldOutsideOrlando and Nuke That Big, Mean Theater in Orlando. Wing-It is irritated but unfazed by the legal threats. “Yeah, yeah we’ll change it,” McMasters says. “But when I get their testy letters, I think ‘Man, I’ve had much bigger people threatening mejust chill out.’”


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Maybe Andrew should get a copy of Orlando's script and see if in fact it does contain EVERY Christmas story ever told. If it doesn't, he should counter-sue them for false advertising.

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