Cowboys Cheerleaders Sue MCR Over White Boots

On Friday the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders' parent company Pro Silver Star filed a temporary restraining order against My Chemical Romance after the band's Hollywood Bowl opener, where dancers in "counterfeit uniforms" of white boots, white vests with blue stars and pom-poms were handed rifles and, per the filing, "depicted being shot and crawling off the stage," per E! News. NBC News pulled the same court documents.

So an LLC that owns a blue vest has now filed a restraining order over a rock concert. The mechanism is simple and worth a second: the cheerleading squad has become a protected brand, and the brand is now so sensitive that depicting it in a stage gunfight counts as brand damage. The filing says the DCC brand, "built on dedication, character, and community," was "put on a stage in a gunfight, its uniform worn by performers shown shooting and being shot." A trademark on a white vest.

Here's the part that makes it real: the audience "understandably believed that the performers were the real Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders." That is the entire legal theory, people getting confused. MCR has been performing staged disasters for two decades, and the song in question is a 2006 track literally called "Teenagers." The point of the show is that everything is a costume. Somewhere a lawyer looked at a line of girls in matching white vests and said that is our silhouette.

The filing even does the classic move. "Not litigious," the company says, "takes no issue with MCR's music," and they only ask "that those performers not wear the DCC Uniform while doing it." A temporary restraining order is not a request. That's what the "not litigious" line in a complaint is for.

YOUR TURN: White boots with blue stars are now a licensed product. What's the first Halloween costume that gets a cease and desist?