The Satanic Temple has sued Warner Bros. Entertainment and Netflix for its new series, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, for copyright infringement, trademark violations, injury to its reputation. The Temple seeks at least $50 million in damages.
The Satanic Temple (The Temple) is formally known as United Federation of Churches LLC.
The Temple filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District Court, alleging that the show copied their statue of the goat-headed deity, Baphomet. The Temple alleges that Netflix copied their Baphomet statute, differing in the statue’s certain physical characteristics.
The Temple also argued that Netflix had falsely implied that the statue stood for “evil” and the Temple’s members participated in cannibalism. In the complaint, The Temple alleged that the antagonists in the show were depicted in a manner that was “in stark contrast to [The Satanic Temple’s] tenets and beliefs.”
The Temple said that the statue was put near the Arkansas Capitol by the Temple as a response to a donated Ten Commandments statue being placed at the capitol as well. The statue was placed there temporarily as an expression of religious equality.
The Temple also argues that the show misappropriates and misrepresents this establishment’s actual beliefs. According to their website, The Temple’s missions is to, “encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense and justice, and be directed by the human conscience to undertake noble pursuits guided by the individual will.”
The show is based on a comic book series in which Sabrina, a half-witch and half-human teenager. Sabrina, played by Kiernana Shipka, is forced to choose between attending Baxter High and living a mortal world or attending the Academy of the Unseen Arts and joining her family in worshipping the Church of Night.
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Source:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/11/09/sabrina-netflix-lawsuit-satanic-temple-sues-over-baphomet-statue/1940562002/
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