Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Nude, Live Law

Nude dancing girls populate the Play Pen and the Pig Pen alike.
There the resemblance ends.
The Play Pen Gentlemen's Club is in East Los Angeles. The name, I think, says it all. The Pig Pen is in Los Santos, part of the virtual world of Grand Theft Auto. As Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain put it in a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion issued Wednesday:
"Not especially saintly, Los Santos is complete with gangs who roam streets inhabited
by prostitutes and drug pushers while random gunfire punctuates
the soundtrack."
Sounds like East Los Angeles, right? But In an entertainingly written opinion, the 9th Circuit panel dismissed the claim by the proprietors of the Play Pen that the makers of Grand Theft Auto infringed on the strip club's trademark -- even though the computer game makers did draw some of their inspiration from photographs they had taken of the East L.A., err, milieu. Writes O'Scannlain:
"Both San Andreas and the Play Pen offer a form of lowbrow
entertainment; besides this general similarity, they have
nothing in common. The San Andreas Game is not complementary
to the Play Pen; video games and strip clubs do not
go together like a horse and carriage or, perish the thought,
love and marriage."

Nicely put, Judge!
See more at:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/F67C75971EA40D9A882574F800511B57/$file/0656237.pdf?openelement




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