A U.S. District Court judge has ruled that video game maker Rockstar Games did not infringe on a trademarks owned by a strip club when it published its video game Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, featuring images of a similar strip club.
E.S.S. Entertainment, which owns the Los Angeles-based Play Pen strip club, sued Rockstar in April 2005, claiming the game violated its trademarks by showing a strip club called The Pig Pen with an awning and logo that looked similar to those used by the Play Pen strip club, CNET Networks reported.
According to documents, E.S.S. attorneys argued that Rockstar employees had toured the area around the strip club and took photographs for the game in order for the artists to create images of the club for the game.
Judge Margaret Morrow said that Rockstar had to prove its free speech defense by showing that the Play Pen lookalike strip club in the game was artistically relevant.
Morrow said that in creating the game’s fictional East Los Santos neighborhood, Rockstar was evoking images of East Los Angeles and of a mythical location overrun by gangs, drug dealers, prostitutes and thugs. Thus, she ruled the use of identifiable features of the club and other locations is permissible as part of an artistic expression for the benefit of the consumer.
