Vegeta finds Vegeta 'unpleasant'.

[Chuquita]

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interes ... oduct-name

All I can picture is that old thread where someone made a parody of the spice container with DB's Vegeta on the cover of it. XD

EDIT:

This is the one.
By Metalwario64 in this thread http://daizex.fanboyreview.net/viewtopi ... eta+spices

But seriously speaking; that'd probably be a fairly interesting legal battle. Now the article says they're not taking any actions like that, but how would that work? Would they just want money? From who, Toei? From JUMP?

[Michsi]

Oh you gotta be kidding me....

Not only are they almost 20 years late, the entire thing is silly beyond belief.

I've known and used the this product for years and while I did notice the name (and found it funny in the beginning)I can't say I ever associated the product with the character.

Makes me wonder if they even know about the entire vegetable name pun.

All we need now is have some famous composer or instrument company complain about Piccolo .....

[penguintruth]

Representatives for the character of Vegeta have said that when asked about this, he demanded they change the name to "Kakkarot", because, "Only pussies eat vegetables."

No word from the Son Goku camp, as Goku still believes television has small people inside of it, and thus hasn't ever used the internet, for fear of disturbing all the naked people.

[Ahiru77]

Vegeta is such a nag.

Dude, you have your own brand! Be freakin happy.

[Mewzard]

Representatives for the character of Vegeta have said that when asked about this, he demanded they change the name to "Kakkarot", because, "Only pussies eat vegetables."

No word from the Son Goku camp, as Goku still believes television has small people inside of it, and thus hasn't ever used the internet, for fear of disturbing all the naked people.

You think the producers of Vegeta have it bad? Imagine how the guys who made Toy Story felt when they Google Image searched Woody...all of those Woody Allen pictures that appear were offensive to their innocent child's toy...oh, and other images results.

But all joking aside, the name is the only thing I imagine the two have in common, and I can't see Vegeta has a character having less international trademark than Vegeta as a condiment. And even if it did, DBZ Vegeta has more recognition, and any attempts to force a change would bring negative press towards the manufacturer.

[Turtle Marked Stone]

I'm no law expert but it just seems like they were both just shortening the word "vegetable". I don't think the case would go anywhere even if they did figure out who to sue.

[xzero]

I am a law expert (no, seriously), so let me take this one. Beforehand, I'll note that this isn't legal advice, and also that because there are international implications, I don't really know for sure how it'd play out for real, but I can give a rough approximation under American law.

Podravka's suit against anyone would fail for a number of reasons. First, Vegeta as a character name was first introduced in 1989. This would be a trademark issue (copyright doesn't protect names), and trademarks last forever. A caveat is that they must be registered with the government and renewed every ten years. Again, this is an international issue, so the latter requirement would be different. The ultimate point is that it's 2011; I don't know what the statute of limitations is, but generally speaking something like this would have lapsed about 20 years ago. Thus, the company couldn't bring suit against them because they 'sat on their rights' for too long.

Second, there isn't any confusion between the character and the condiment. One of the issues is that you'd confuse the allegedly infringing product as the original. An anime character is so unrelated to a condiment, there is no feasible possibility of confusion.

As to the first question about who they would sue, it would depend. Back in 1989, I'd probably have named Toriyama personally, Jump, and probably Toei as defendants. You're not really looking to collect from Toryiama; the idea is to get Jump or Toei to be held liable because they have deeper pockets. But again, this presents a real problem: harm. You can't prove harm in this instance because, like I noted above, no one's going to confuse the two. In fact, people might be more inclined to buy the condiment based on name recognition than they would be to buy it if it were labeled differently, so not only is there no harm, but it's conceivable that there's a benefit. There's no reason to pursue the case because there's nothing to really collect. And again, this is not legal advice to anyone.

[Turtle Marked Stone]

*Awesome person typing awesome things*

This is why I love the internet. Interesting read.

[Choujin Daizenshuu]

"IT STINKS!"

[Herms]

"IT STINKS!"

Heh, good one.

[TrunksTrevelyan0064]

No matter how hard anyone tries to sue anyone, a Google Images search of "Vegeta" will continue to yield OVER 9000 (yes, I went there) 'violent images' of our beloved Saiya-jin.

[Turtle Marked Stone]

(yes, I went there)

You edgy bastard.

[Ranmarotto]

(yes, I went there)

You edgy bastard.

And you call him an edgy bastard, look what I just whipped up!