X Play Owns the Word “Not” for Porn Parodies
Scramble for “Kinda”, “Sorta” and “Almost” Next
Registered Trademark Gives X-Play Sole Usage of the Word NOT for Adult Movies
(Hollywood, CA) After nearly two years of attempts, X-Play has finally been granted a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for usage of the word ‘Not’ in an adult movie title.
With high profile movies such as Not the Bradys XXX, Not Bewitched XXX, Not the Cosbys XXX, Not Married with Children XXX, Not Airplane XXX: Flight Attendants, and many others that have become franchise type properties, the Registered Trademark supplies protection from other companies wishing to capitalize on the good name that X-Play has created with their Not…XXX series of best-selling porn.
“We had to gently ask companies over the past year or so not to use the word ‘No’t in their adult movie titles and a few companies agreed and changed their titles particularly those in the parody arena,” stated Jeff Mullen president of X-Play.
“However with the proliferation and popularity of the porn parody by so many companies it became more important than ever to protect our Not…XXX brand and we now have legal rights to keep others from using the word ‘not’ especially at the beginning of their movie title,” Mullen who directs using the name Will Ryder continued.
Recent movies such as Not Really the Dukes of Hazard and Not Another Porn Movie produced by other companies are examples of titles that will not be able to continue in sequels with their present titles. Not Really Taxi is another.
“We will not take any action against our friends in the industry that have already released movies using the word ‘not’ especially since we elected to remain quiet as our final stages of Trademark acceptance were completed but anybody planning new movies or sequels should think up another title without using the word not,” Mullen said with a smile.
“A few executives even doubted that we would be granted a trademark but still changed their titles and we appreciate that but now we have been granted the trademark. I was not aware of the Dukes parody until they had already printed up artwork so we really didn’t want to make a big deal of it because we are friends with everybody at that company and who knows we might do business with them one day soon.”
The award-winning production team at X-Play understands the irony in all of this considering that spoofs of blockbuster classic television shows are the basis of their porn parody success but still they understand they must prevent confusion which might result from other companies capitalizing on the good name and brand awareness that they have created among those that purchase adult movies.
“New Sensations has their brand of adult parody titles, Hustler has their unique title prefix, Devils has theirs, Zero Tolerance and PopPorn have theirs and others go out of their way to make sure they create their own identify but the use of the word ‘Not’ should now be avoided,” Mullen suggested.
He also makes note that the adult movie business usually goes out of their way to inform the audience that porn movie parodies are not created or endorsed by the television production companies that brought to market the original television shows which tends to avoid any confusion in the marketplace among reasonable thinking people.
X-Play’s only problem now is that they cannot locate the little letter r inside the circle on their computers that signifies a US Trademark. “Maybe we can borrow one from Digital Playground,” Mullen said jokingly. “They have a lot of registered trademarks over there.”
X-Play is looking forward to the release of Not Married with Children XXX 2 on March 23rd and reports that the recently released Not the Cosbys XXX 2 is more popular and getting better critical acclaim than the 2010 AVN Award winning Best Parody Not the Cosbys XXX with also picked up awards from NightMoves, XCritic, CAVR and Rogreviews.
Movies trailers for all X-Play movies can be seen at www.sitcums.com
