Andrew S., the owner of Hush-Hush, said that if the cease and desist letter is not honored, Hush-Hush immediately will file a lawsuit in federal court.
“We will not allow anyone to infringe upon our intellectual property rights,” Andrew said. “Industry leaders have noted a marked increase in adult content piracy and usurpation of intellectual property rights. Hush-Hush is committed to the aggressive protection of its property rights, and we will waste no time in filing a lawsuit to protect the Hush-Hush family name.”
When checked by XBIZ Friday afternoon, the HushEntertainment.tv appeared to be under construction, as most of the links on the site were not active, including the join and login links. The company behind the site, however, reportedly planned to celebrate the launch of HushEntertainment.tv tonight at the birthday party of a well-known adult industry personality.
According to a statement posted on Tony Batman’s website, in addition to celebrating Batman’s birthday, “also taking place will be the website release celebration of HushEntertainment.tv, home of the Hush Honey’s.”
Lawrence Ecoff, attorney for Hush-Hush, told XBIZ that his client “just learned about [HushEntertainment.tv] today.”
“Andrew has spent a great deal of time and energy in building the Hush-Hush brand,” Ecoff said. “This is just an example of someone trying to take advantage of that.”
Ecoff said that given the nearly identical names, and the fact that the two entities are part of the same industry and market, there is no arguing that HushEntertainment.tv has not violated Hush-Hush intellectual property rights.
“The law deals with confusion,” Ecoff said. “We don’t think there’s any chance that people would not be confused by this, because the names are so similar, and they are in the same business.”
Sonny Rhem, owner of HushEntertainment.tv told XBIZ that he had not received the cease and desist letter yet and that he “doesn’t know what they are talking about.”
“If you say ‘Hush Hush’ that’s totally different than ‘Hush,’” Rhem said. “We’re also a totally different type of company — they do hardcore and all that stuff, and the majority of what we do is simulated [sex] or softcore.”
Rhem also asserted a qualitative difference between the models, the content and the film quality of his company’s products as compared to those of Hush-Hush, saying that his company is aiming for a “new, fresh approach to adult entertainment.”
“Their girls are just nasty,” Rhem said. “Our girls are high-quality. Think of Cindy Crawford nude — that’s what we’re all about. We call our girls Hush Honeys because they are sweet and gorgeous. I don’t really like all that hardcore stuff … I don’t find it particularly arousing.”
Rhem said that he believes that the distinctions between his company and Hush-Hush are significant enough that there will be no confusion between the two.
“In order to [confuse them] there would have to be some similarities,” Rhem said.
