A Halloween Court Battle Over Who Gets to Be Top Banana
You know what'll never be NOT funny? Seeing a human walking around in a banana costume.
But here's a straight-faced truth: There's a war playing out in federal court in New Jersey over who owns the rights to make banana-shaped costumes.
Kmart Corporation is being sued by Rasta Imposta, a New Jersey-based costume manufacturing company, for unfair competition and copyright infringement. Since 2008, Kmart purchased Rasta Imposta costumes for resale during Halloween, but this year the company stopped doing so, saying it had found another vendor.
Rasta Imposta claims it holds a 2010 copyright on the design, and says Kmart's new banana costume is a knockoff.
"I don't even think the term knockoff banana costume has any meaning," says Chris Sprigman, a professor at NYU School of Law who specializes in intellectual property and copyright. "There have been banana costumes before and I'm sure there will be banana costumes again."
According to the National Retail Federation, Americans are expected to spend around $9.1 million on Halloween candy, costumes and decorations in 2017, with over a third of that spent on costumes alone.
Sprigman says Halloween season brings its fair share of copyright lawsuits, but in his opinion, a judge would do well to toss this case out of court. "[Rasta Imposta is] claiming now, effectively, that no one else can make a banana costume," explained Sprigman, "which is a ridiculous assertion of copyright to attempt to create possibly one of the world's silliest monopolies in banana costumes."
Shumita Basu spoke to WNYC's Richard Hake.
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