THRASH METAL ARTIST PSYCHOSOMATIC DEAL WITH RAPPER WHO DOESN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT IS

Thrash metal band Psychosomatic’s founding member Jeff Salgado had a social media call out over the weekend when a rapper named Jeffrey Bremerman who has been going by the name Cykosomatik had his Facebook page shut down. Bremerman stated that he had reached out to Salgado and had not heard back from him the same day so he “seeking legal action to sue these assholes”.

The complete posting on Bremerman public Facebook page states:

“Woke up this morning to find out my music page has been reported and shut down for copyright infringement by a metal band with the same name, spelled differently. I tried to reach out to them and figure this out but they are ignoring me. If anybody has any advice on seeking legal action to sue these assholes for defamation of character and hurting my business I would greatly appreciate it. If you’re my friend, family or a fan of my music, you know what to do… (and posted the band’s FB URL”).

Anyone claiming copyright infringement should realize that in order to consider this viable, the other party would have had to use their image, content, or material without their consent. An artist attempting to sue over a the similarities in the same sounding name but spelt different and used in the same field of service is “Trademark Infringement” and falls to the person who has verification of using the name first and can show verification.

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Jeff Salgado shared the issue on his page and the hilarity of the replies were definitely amusing. I don’t think that challenging the metal community is the smartest way to get this resolved. Salgado has the right to not only have Bremerman’s FB page removed but can have his Bandcamp page removed as well and Amazon Music, iTunes, or anywhere that he uses the phonetically misspelt name.

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Trademark Attorney Abhishek Saini states:

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“Trademark infringement is judged not only by visual similarity but also by phonetically similarity, for example pearson and peersun both are visually different even the meanings are different but phonetically both are identical and therefore use of peersun will amount to trademark infringement in view of pearson.”

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This is not the first time that this has happened in the music industry and will not be the last. It can get rather costly for the artist found at fault and at that point defamation charges can be added by the use of social media attacks. I’ve personally known of Jeff’s band Psychosomatic since its inception in the late 80’s and have also known Jeff for many decades. There is a professional decorum to how artists can come to a resolution but not being patient and calling the other “assholes” at the beginning of communication is off to a bad start. My word of advice to anyone wanting to challenge Salgado is “Don’t Poke The Bear”.

Hear more about this incident on today’s broadcast of The Jeff Salgado Podcast

Don’t forget to check out Psychosomatic’s 2020 album release ‘Invisible Prison’ HERE