DENVER, COLO. -- U.S. District Court Judge Christine Arguello officially tabled a legal dispute between ski film companies Warren Miller Entertainment (WME) and Level 1 Productions on Tuesday, ruling in favor of an early-October motion by WME to stay proceedings.
The court battle now famous in the freestyle skiing realm began Monday, Sept. 21 when WME, the company that annually produces the internationally celebrated Warren Miller ski movies, filed a trademark infringement suit against Level 1 Productions over what it claims to be the unauthorized use of its namesake's voice. Just over a week earlier, Level 1 Productions premiered its latest film Refresh which contains several minutes of voiceover from ski film icon Warren Miller.
The company claims that the voiceover puts Level 1 in breach of a 1998 agreement with Warren Miller that granted Warren Miller Entertainment "the exclusive right, in perpetuity, in all media, to the name, the personal endorsement, his voice and the likeness of Warren Miller." The agreement was a reaffirmation of documents delineating the terms of Warren Miller's 1988 sale of the film company.
Courtesy of facebook.com/warrenmiller
Warren Miller and Josh Berman, owner of Level 1 Productions.
Warren Miller entered the case several days after the original filing with a petition for party in the suit, and meanwhile denounced the firm's actions in online public statements. Claiming that Miller's petition for party in the case indicated that he "misunderstands the earlier agreements with WME and the respective rights each party now holds," the ski entertainment firm filed the motion to put its case with Level 1 on hold, hoping to focus instead on the differences of opinion with its namesake that took more than 20 years to surface.
We are anxious to legally resolve this difference of opinion, which will also serve to stop Warren Miller from continuing to mislead the public and companies with false statements about WME and our rights and stop the unauthorized use of WME's trademarks by Warren Miller and any other party that might be led to believe that he is free to re-sell those rights.
WME and Warren Miller will likely have plenty of time — about a year — to smooth out those wrinkles. In the interest of maximizing the effectiveness of PR surrounding the legal dispute, the court has tentatively scheduled the resumption of WME v. Level 1 Productions for early next September — in time for video premiere season, 2010.
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