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Secret Boston war is over after interloping European site changes name and threatens to sue original site

Competing events sites both calling themselves Secret Boston told a federal judge today they've settled their trademark war - the day after the upstart site, headquartered in Barcelona, filed papers in court that it had changed its name and was bringing a countersuit against the original Secret Boston for the calumny of saying people were being confused by two events sites with similar names promoting different Van Gogh exhibits.

The locally based Secret Boston, which had been promoting an interactive Van Gogh exhibit this fall, sued Fever, Inc. in US District Court in June after Fever set up a site called Secret Boston and began promoting a different interactive Van Gogh exhibit this fall.

In a filing yesterday, Fever, Inc., which uses the "Secret" naming convention in other cities, tried to lower the temperature by saying it had changed the name of its Boston effort to Uncovered Boston. But in the same document, it also turned up the gas by bringing a counter-suit against Secret Boston by alleging it had deliberately set out to ruin Fever's reputation in Boston by using such dastardly words as "FAKE!" and "DUPED!" in relation to the latter's Van Gogh promotion.

Fever accused Secret Boston of creating a controversy where none existed to try to whip up people who could later be cited as evidence of mass confusion between two online vehicles with the same name promoting completely different events (save for their focus on the same artist).

Letting the original site prevail would let it benefit from what the legal world refers to as "the doctrine of unclean hands" and Fever asked the judge already assigned to the Secret Boston suit to not only dismiss that suit but to castigate the original Secret Boston most severely and force it to pay triple damages for making such untoward accusations.

Before the judge in the case could consider the allegations, however, both sides today filed a motion that they had settled their legal beef and that no judicial attention would be needed.

As is customary in such agreements, the sides did not specify what made them come to such a sudden meeting of the minds. But no matter: Judge Leo Sorokin promptly canceled a hearing set for Sept. 9 on the case and marked the case closed on the docket.


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Comments

Magoo had a legal battle with a European Magoo Doppelgänger internet comment poster called Magoo Tellz. Magoo won. By the by “doppelgänger” is one of Magoo’s favorite words. Magoo.

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According to John Winthrop, Boston is a city on a hill, with the eyes of all people upon it. The judge should have ruled that Boston doesn't have any secrets, therefore the name sucks, and both entities claiming it should just go away.

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The clergy child sex abuse scandal, Whitey Bulger, and the Boston FBI would like a word.

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utterly sucks or doesn't?

I'm holding tickets to a half-dozen 2020 shows that got pushed to this year, and another half-dozen I bought this year, and I now fear I won't get to see any of them anytime soon, never mind the Secret Van Gogh Whatsitses.

The livelihoods of my most beloved artists and artisans in music. theater, dance, restaurants, etc., as well as their multitudinous supporting casts, are being threatened because we live in the single goddamned stupidest moment in American history. My idle entertainment and my avocation as a restaurant critic can wait, but those good folks might starve in the meantime.

It makes me want to tear my teeth out. Fuck the orange death-eater cult and the greedy, sociopathic right-wing political and media exploiters of its pig ignorance. They're poised to kill American culture along with their own idiot selves and untold innocents.

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