UK's "Glee Club" Sues FOX Over "Glee"

Fox has had a hit for itself in the last few years with its “Glee” franchise that will enter into a whole new phase next season as a few of its regulars have finally graduated and will be moving along to their new lives. Before that happens, though, the show’s producer, 20th Century Fox, will be facing off against somebody who isn’t such a fan of the show: the UK's Glee Club chain of comedy clubs.

Owner Mark Tughan says “he will expose the ‘hypocrisy’ of Rupert Murdoch when a multi-million pound trademark battle gets to court,” according to the Birmingham Post. And he's not joking.

While glee clubs are ubiquitous in America, in the UK Tughan believes he has the market cornered on Glee, having "opened his first Glee venue in Birmingham’s Hurst Street in 1994. He said he formally registered “The Glee Club” trademark in 2001, renewing it in 2009, prior to the pilot episode of Glee coming out. He opened another club in Cardiff in 2001, followed by Oxford and Nottingham branches."

The lawsuit has been handed up from the Patent County Court to the High Court and Tughan can’t wait to do battle. He told the newspaper, “Ultimately this is a case that will be decided on in law but we have a situation where Rupert Murdoch tweets about people stealing his content and what he is talking about is his intellectual property. I will say that it is hypocritical as this is exactly what he has been doing in this case.”