Festival claims competitors copied its past
Organizers of an annual festival that moved from North Park to Butler County in 2001 are suing a competing festival for $150,000 plus all profits made from that festival this year.
Beth Ann Rush, an organizer of the Penn's Colony festival, said the lawsuit is based on perceived customer confusion and alleged copyright violations.
Rush said there was a portion of the copyrighted materials that may have caused confusion. "(Our attorney) felt that there were issues that have to be addressed concerning copyrighted materials, trade duress and some unfair competition. It wasn't just that there were similarities."
Paul Reznick, attorney with Webb, Ziesenheim, Logsdon, Orkin & Hanson, the Pittsburgh firm representing Penn's Colony Association Inc., said the burden of proof is on the Rush family to demonstrate that the North Park Colonial Arts & Crafts Festival had the look and feel of Penn's Colony.
A map passed out at the North Park festival was called into question in the lawsuit against Irwin-based Family Festivals Association Inc.
"The map is what was attached to the complaint," Reznick said.
The lawsuit, filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, said the organizers of the new festival "copied the Penn's Colony Festival Map and other aspects of Penn's Colony by offering for sale and conducting an unauthorized copy of the (Penn's Colony) Festival."
Dave Stoner, who organized the North Park Colonial Arts & Crafts Festival with his wife, Debbie, paid about $250,000 for the festival this year.
Of that, $52,500 went to rent a portion of North Park, and about $20,000 went to Allegheny County police for traffic control and security services.
The show included a juried selection of craft vendors and Revolutionary War-era re-enactors at the five-day show earlier this month.
Stoner referred questions about the lawsuit to his attorney, Christine Trebilcock.
Trebilcock, of Cohen and Grigsby of Pittsburgh, called the lawsuit "baseless."
"I think that there are other colonial festivals in this area, through Pennsylvania and Ohio," she said. "If you are going to be replicating a festival and you want to be authentic, it's hard to find what's copyrightable about that because it is re-creating history. It's definitely meritless."
Trebilcock refrained from expanding on the issue.
"At this point, there's not much to say about it," she said.
About 250 vendors, who paid at least $490 for a 10-foot-by-12-foot space, were scheduled to attend this year's festival in North Park.
Penn's Colony had been in North Park since 1992, but in 2000, the county began working on a policy to govern rentals at its nine parks.
The measure came, in part, as a result of an audit of the 1999 festival that showed Penn's Colony grossed $391,000 while paying $16,500 rent. Penn's Colony moved to a site in Clinton Township, Butler County, last year.
Dave Stoner stated previously that he had hoped his festival would draw 50,000 people.
Penn's Colony Festival opened Friday and runs through Sept. 29 in Saxonburg. It drew about 70,000 people in 2000, its last year in North Park.
