This is actually a fairly interesting case - at least the way I see it.
Choose Your Own Adventure was originally a brand name for a new kind of product (technically a segment of the publishing industry, but still novel in that sense) that was subsequently trademarked. Netflix's argument - and it's one that makes a lot of sense - is that the new tier of product CYOA was applied to became so widespread and ubiquitous that the trademark was rendered essentially worthless. That's going to be hard to argue against based on, well, reality.
But the wrinkle is that those styles of books only really became generic because the trademark holder arguably didn't enforce it strongly enough back then. Presumably because there was no point going after every single small press that decided to do books with a choice component after the original CYOA series became so popular.
So really this is a situation of Chooseco's own making in two ways. Obviously they brought this on themselves by suing Netflix, but also by allowing the idea to proliferate so widely in its heyday.
To be clear, though, it should be apparent to anyone that Bandersnatch was purposefully playing on the nostalgia for the CYOA brand.
www.techdirt.com
www.youtube.com
