Industry Noize: Letters From Spaceland

Hamden, Conn.’s Spaceland Ballroom is now called The Ballroom at The Outer Space, thanks to a dispute with a Los Angeles promoter who claims to own the name “Spaceland.”

Steve Rodgers, owner of the Hamden venue, received a cease-and-desist letter from a lawyer representing Spaceland Productions in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles.

The company is an offshoot of the now-defunct Spaceland nightclub in the same neighborhood.

It’s hard to imagine anyone seriously mistaking one for the other – but that’s not necessarily the issue.

The Silver Lake Spaceland operated between 1995 and 2011, trademarking the name in the 1990s, according to the New Haven Register.

Spaceland Productions continues to promote shows under the name “Spaceland Presents” Rodgers told the paper he started getting the C&D letters six months ago.

“I thought they’d go away, but they didn’t,” he said. “They must have seen us as enough of a threat – 3,000 miles away,” he added.

A spokeswoman for Spaceland Productions explained the company’s position in an email to the Register.

“The name Spaceland is trademarked,” Cook wrote to the paper. “Trademark law makes it unlawful for a business to use a trademark in connection with a good or service if that use is confusingly similar to another business’s use of a trademark. Spaceland Productions and Spaceland Ballroom fall into that category because both companies work in live music entertainment.”

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