Masters of Cinema / Masters of Cinema - completely different, obviously!

MoC vs. Phaidon
(from Masters of Cinema)

DVD publisher Eureka Entertainment are currently battling it out with much-bigger-company Phaidon, a book publisher who have recently decided to name a series of books "The Masters of Cinema Series", which Eureka has been using as a brand name for DVDs and Blu-rays for about seven years.

The books in question were originally published in French under a completely different title, so it's not as if Phaidon have just done a simple translation job -- they've (possibly deliberately) just nicked someone else's established brand.

When alerted to this fact, Phaidon decided it didn't matter -- books and DVDs are different, they say. I'm sure they'd be delighted if someone started releasing a series of DVDs as "The Phaidon Collection" without asking; never mind the fact that Eureka regularly get requests for information about "their books" from both professional trade and regular consumers -- clearly there is crossover and confusion.

Unfortunately for Phaidon, the very audience for these arty/intellectual film books is rallying behind the original Masters of Cinema on twitter, where MoC are hoping to enact some kind of fan-led change of mind from the publisher (see #badPhaidon for more) without having to resort to expensive legal proceedings -- other legal avenues have already been explored and shot down by Phaidon. Eureka want to protect their brand, but it's clearly going to cost them and that's always bad for the consumer -- less cash to put into releases and all that.

That's more or less the state of it anyway, though this official statement on the MoC website explains it more clearly (and in more detail).