And a nation exhales.
A lawsuit, brought against HP by rock and roll pioneer and world-famous Twister Chubby Checker, has been settled. The saga is over.
In a case that was quite possibly constructed via Mad Libs, Chubby Checker sued HP in February of last year, claiming that the company had violated his trademark and associated it with “obscene, sexual connotation and images.”
Chubby Checker was incensed about ‘The Chubby Checker,’ a now-defunct app for Palm OS that allowed people to estimate the size of a man’s penis based on his shoe size. Chubby Checker didn’t take kindly to the app’s use of his name, stating that using ‘Chubby Checker’ as a way to, well, check chubbies, was a “vulgar pun.” This is HP’s problem because the company acquired Palm in 2010.
Checker got around to filing his lawsuit nearly eight years after the app initially appeared. The Chubby Checker app was made available for Palm devices way back in 2006, and was reportedly still available as recently as 2012.
During that time, The Chubby Checker app was downloaded fewer than 100 times.
According to Reuters, HP has agreed not to “make future use of his stage name, likeness or related trademarks.” It’s unknown at this time whether or not any money was actually paid out.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
