Gail Zappa, widow of Frank Zappa, has been in a long battle to acquire the Captain Beefheart trademark. Having filed for the trademark last August, her intentions are still unclear.
“Captain Beefheart” was the alias of Frank Zappa’s former collaborator and competitor aka Don Van Vliet. Throughout Zappa’s history, Frank had obtained many a lawsuit in his day.
Widow Gail Zappa filed a lawsuit in 2008 against a German Festival dedicated to Frank Zappa’s music by ordering them to change the festival name from Zappanale gala and to remove Frank’s statue that stood in the center of the city. The court ruled in favor of the Germans.
According to yahoo, Frank Zappa did try and sue fellow comrade “Captain Beefheart” for his name many years ago.
Rock idle Frank Zappa passed away in 1993 while rival Vliet died in 2010. It was in 2012 the Frank Zappa’s family estate released Bat Chain Puller which was thought to have been lost forever due to Zappa’s lawsuit against manager Herb Cohen.
A trademark for the “Captain Beefheart” name would include entitlement to products such as sunglasses, journals, video games, and mobile phone graphics.
Get in on the fine print.
The description provided to the USPTO for CAPTAIN BEEFHEART is Audio and video recordings featuring music and concerts; musical sound recordings; musical video recordings; phonograph records featuring music; pre-recorded CDs, DVDs, audio tapes, video tapes, audio discs, video discs, audio cartridges, and video cartridges featuring music and concerts; downloadable audio recordings, downloadable video recordings, and downloadable MP3 files all featuring music and concerts; downloadable motion picture films, downloadable television shows and downloadable radio shows all featuring music and concerts; downloadable multimedia files featuring music and concerts; electronic publications, namely, books, magazines, manuals, journals, catalogs, brochures, newsletters, featuring music and concerts recorded on computer media; interactive multimedia computer game programs; music-composition software; software for creating music; software featuring musical sound recordings and musical video recordings; multimedia software recorded on CD-ROM featuring music and concerts; electronic game software; downloadable ring tones for mobile phones; downloadable graphics for mobile phones; sunglasses.
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