Chooseco LLC, the company that owns the Choose Your Own Adventure line of multi-path children's books, has officially reached a settlement with Netflix in its 2019 copyright lawsuit over the 2018 interactive film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
The lawsuit, originally filed in Vermont, accused Netflix of effectively relying upon a nonexistent association with the CYOA brand in order to market and define Bandersnatch, to the point where the film's protagonist name-drops CYOA to help define what he's trying to do with the game he's making. While Chooseco and Netflix were reportedly engaged in negotiations over CYOA for two years leading up to Bandersnatch's release, Netflix didn't receive the license. (20th Century Fox currently holds an options contract for CYOA.)
Netflix's defense in the case was to claim it was a First Amendment issue, and as such, filed a motion to dismiss in February of 2020. This motion was denied, on the basis of the judge questioning whether or not Netflix's marketing for Bandersnatch was deliberately misleading over its connection to the CYOA brand. The case subsequently moved on to the pre-trial discovery phase, which involves both sides of the dispute conducting interviews and research to build their cases.
However, the lawsuit was abruptly resolved this week, when Netflix and Chooseco revealed during a status conference in court on Monday that they'd reached a settlement. The terms of that settlement have not been publically disclosed, but did involve an unusual condition: the judge, William Sessions III, would have to vacate his opinion regarding Netflix's motion to dismiss. Sessions agreed, which renders his response to Netflix's motion legally void. This means that no future court cases that involve Netflix can rely upon Sessions' reasoning for denying Netflix's motion, which comes down to Netflix seemingly not wanting a bad legal precedent to be loose in the world.
The Choose Your Own Adventure book series originally ran from 1979 to 1998, beginning with Edward Packard's The Cave of Time. The original run quickly became notorious among children of the period for how its negative outcomes were often profoundly disturbing, including death, fates worse than death, and in one memorable instance, the universe itself ceasing to exist because of the reader's mistake. Nonetheless, the CYOA series has sold more than 265 million copies of its various books. This includes licensed versions of the basic premise that starred characters from franchises like Transformers, Star Wars, Walt Disney cartoons, and Young Indiana Jones.
Chooseco, founded by original CYOA author R.A. Montgomery, took over publishing for the series from Bantam Books in 2005, and has been issuing new original CYOAs ever since, albeit at a much slower clip than the original series. It recently signed a deal with American poet Kazim Ali to produce a new three-book CYOA, The Citadel of Whispers, which is slated to begin in 2021.
Source: Hollywood Reporter