Update on the Impact / Broken Hardys Lawsuit Threat

Impact Wrestling may be threatening the Hardys with a lawsuit in order to pressure them into working out a deal where Impact receives royalties for the “Broken Universe” characters, according to PWInsider.

Matt Hardy filed for a trademark on the “Broken Matt Hardy” name on March 1 and that is what apparently prompted Impact to send a cease and desist.

They are claiming that others in TNA/Impact were part of the creative process, including Jeremy Borash and Billy Corgan. However, if a deal is worked out, it does seem unlikely that Impact would share any of the money with Billy Corgan (or others who are no longer with the company).

WWE seems to have “cut and dry” language in their contracts when it comes to characters that they create, which has obviously prevented many wrestlers from using their WWE names in other promotions. The situation with Impact is not as clear, though, and there’s no word on how “ironclad” the language in the contract is.

Bully Ray apparently created his character while he worked for TNA and he reportedly currently owns the rights to it and is using it in Ring of Honor right now, so that is a precedent that may work against Impact.

It also depends on how much TNA’s creative team had to do with the characters and how much of it was the Hardys themselves. There have been a lot of conflicting reports on who originally came up with the idea, with some people claiming that Jeremy Borash and Billy Corgan originally pitched the idea for the “Final Deletion” and “Broken Matt Hardy” characters, but it’s not really clear how much they had to do with it and how much of it was the Hardys developing the characters themselves.