Zombie walk scares up lawsuit among Long Beach groups

Founders of the Long Beach Zombie Walk are suing former business partners for copyright infringement and breach of contract, alleging that they tried to reap profits by stealing the rights to the aual Halloween festival.

Long Beach Cinematheque, a nonprofit film organization that started the Zombie Walk in 2009, says that Long Beach-based O Entertainment secretly registered the domain name longbeachzombiefest.com, illegally copied and used the event’s logo, and cut the event founders out of plaing for recent festivals, in violation of their partnership agreement.

O Entertainment engaged in “a scheme to produce the aual Long Beach zombie walk festival and reap substantial profits from sponsorship opportunities, vendors, ticket sales, and other commercial activity,” according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Califoia.

Steven L. Krongold, the attoey for Long Beach Cinematheque founder and CEO Logan Crow, said the lawsuit is a last resort after attempts to resolve the matter with O Entertainment.

“He realized that this festival had basically been usurped and taken from him, and it went off in a direction he was not happy about,” Krongold said. “It was a neighborhood walk and it was a fun thing for adults to dress up and watch a movie. He entered into this agreement with these people and was promised he would have creative control, and that’s not what happened. It tued into a caival, which is not what it’s supposed to be.”

O Entertainment, which has organized the Long Beach BBQ Festival, as well as the city’s Crawfish and Lobster festivals, is a family-run company with Roy Hassett serving as president.

The company says in court documents that the lawsuit is “frivolous, totally and completely without merit.” O Entertainment is seeking an award for any costs to defend the case, which is scheduled for an April 2017 jury trial in Santa Ana.

“He has no case,” Hassett said. “We think we will prevail. It is a hissy fit on the part of Logan Crow. ... He would have named my grandmother and uncle (in the lawsuit). He would have dug them up and served them. We’re treating it as a comedy.”

A zombie copyright apocalypse

The Zombie Walk in October started in 2009 with about 300 people walking through Retro Row to promote a screening of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.”

Helped by television shows such as AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” the local event attracted about 3,000 people dressed as zombies the following year, and in 2011 transformed into a festival with music, vendors and films.

According to Long Beach Cinematheque’s court filing, the organization in 2011 registered the domain name zombiewalklb.com to promote the festival, and enlisted a graphic designer to create a logo for the event.

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Long Beach Cinematheque says as the festival’s popularity exploded, Crow was introduced to Hassett in late 2013 while looking for professional assistance with event plaing and operations.

The organization alleges that Hassett, on behalf of O Entertainment and without Long Beach Cinematheque’s knowledge, registered a different domain name, longbeachzombiefest.com on Dec. 21, 2013.

The two sides entered into a partnership agreement on Feb. 28, 2014, with Long Beach Cinematheque retaining ownership of all rights in the Long Beach zombie walk festival, including control of all creative content, according to the lawsuit. O Entertainment was to control festival operations, production and finances, with Crow continuing “to be the public face of the festival” according to the lawsuit.

“It was important to me because I spent years operating this event and making sure it maintains a certain amount of integrity and its coectivity to the community,” Crow said.

Crow said since then, the zombie walk has tued into the Crawfish Festival “with makeup.” Long Beach Cinematheque and O Entertainment organized, marketed and produced the 2014 Long Beach Zombie Walk Festival, but Hassett’s group denied creative control to Crow’s organization, the lawsuit says.

Long Beach Cinematheque alleges that in 2015, O Entertainment cut them out of the plaing process, created competing social media platforms, diverted revenues and falsified expenses.

In court documents, Long Beach Cinematheque says on Oct. 22, 2015, it formally terminated its partnership with O Entertainment and waed that any use of the Long Beach Zombie Walk Festival name, logo or artwork was a breach of Crow’s intellectual property rights, according to the lawsuit.

Despite the waings, O Entertainment continued to use and display the logo in coection with the 2015 zombie walk, says Crow, who has distanced himself from the event he started. The lawsuit also says O Entertainment used a logo substantially similar to the one in coection with the 2016 zombie walk.

Meanwhile, according to allegations in the lawsuit, around March 2015, Hassett told vendors and prospective vendors that the city wanted O Entertainment to take over the aual festival because Crow owed Long Beach money for past zombie events.

Long Beach Cinematheque says they owed less than $4,000, and that Hassett “promised Crow that he would pay that debt and deduct that payment from the 2014 profits owed under the partnership agreement.”

Long Beach Cinematheque is seeking an unspecified amount in compensatory, consequential and punitive damages.

Who owns the zombies?

In court documents, O Entertainment denies the allegations.

Even if Long Beach Cinematheque can prove a copyright violation, Hassett’s company says they did not do so intentionally. O Entertainment also argues in court documents that the use of the logo falls under fair use law, and that the terms “Zombie Walk” and “Zombie Fest” are not protected by copyright law.

O Entertainment says in court filings that the logo they allegedly copied lacks originality, as “the same style has been used in Zombie Walks across the country. Furthermore, the terms ‘Zombie Walk’ and ‘Zombie Festival’ lacks originality as those terms have been used countless times.”

Hassett’s company says it did nothing to financially damage Long Beach Cinematheque and any losses by Crow’s organization were self-inflicted.

“We bailed him out of debt and tued it into a major festival,” Hassett said.