The good news is that copyright doesn't protect the use of a single word, such as Cookery. So in your hypothetical scenario, the folks with the reality contest on TV wouldn't have a right to sue under the copyright law.

The bad news is that there's more to take into account. The law of trademarks might be applicable, since in your hypothetical, Cookery would be a trademark for the TV reality show. So the question to discuss in the real world with the lawyer you're going to consult about this would be what are your legal risks if you use the name of the TV reality show in your fictional film to identify a different TV contest that's the backdrop of your drama, and what if you use that as the title of your film as well. Might you be subject to having to pay a lawyer to defend you in court, to pay damages for violating their rights, and to being subject to a court order (an injunction) to stop public showings of the film?

In evaluating those questions, one takes into account that trademark law exists to protect the public from becoming confused as to the source or sponsorship of particular goods or services. For example, is there a likelihood that some people who would see an advertisement for your film might buy a ticket at the box office thinking that they were about to see a movie set in the environment of the existing reality show? Might the film portray the fictional producer or host of the contest as having nasty characteristics that the audience would attribute to the actual producer or host of the TV reality show, tarnishing their reputations? (Have you noticed boilerplate language in the trailing credits of most movies disclaiming as "purely coincidental" any resemblance between the characters in the movie with any person, living or dead?) If the answer to any of these questions might be Yes, then you'd want to evaluate the likelihood that the producers of the TV reality show would be willing to spend good money to hire a law firm to seek a remedy in court. You've already said that you don't expect to make a profit from the movie, so although it's not impossible that a plaintiff might be awarded money damages from you, it's most likely that the result of such a suit would be to generate a court order requiring you to avoid further harm to the legal interests of the TV reality show and its personnel.

I think you're right in surmising that if the title of the film is the same as the name of the TV reality show, the producers would be more likely to be angered by your "sincerest form of flattery" of their name than if the film had a different title. And in either event, if you were to be sued, you'd be more likely to lose the case in the scenario where your film has the same name as their TV show.

Your hypothetical reminds me of the Eddie Murphy movie Coming to America. Eddie's character (secretly an African prince) woos a girl in the Borough of Queens whose father runs a fast food restaurant called "McDowell's" that looks suspiciously like a genuine McDonald's franchise. A subplot is that he is being harassed by McDonald's for passing off his business, all the while that Eddie Murphy's royal character is passing himself off as a commoner. According to the Wikipedia entry: "Because of the name similarity, the film's producers had to obtain permission from McDonald's before using the name McDowell's. The McDowell's scenes were filmed at a Wendy's restaurant located at 8507 Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst, Queens."

Ironically, as Wikipedia also documents: "The film was the subject of the Buchwald v. Paramount civil suit, filed by Art Buchwald in 1990 against the film's producers on the grounds that the film's idea was stolen from a 1982 script that Paramount had optioned from Buchwald. Buchwald won the breach of contract action and the court ordered money damages. The parties later settled the case before an appeal."

Just to add to Mr. Elfman's correct response - it appears that the name of the contest is not critical to your project even though you have chosen it for the title of your film. A large TV network is unlikely to grant license to an independent moviemaker. You would not be in trouble right now as you did not make a commercial use of the name that the network will have heard about. But trust me, if you release the movie or show it at a film festival you are very likley to receive seem legal contact and why face that? A service mark has the same legal force and effect as a trade mark. You are on notice that this company has sought to protect this name for its TV contest. That is an indication that they consider it to have value worth protecting. So often in these issues, it is unfortunate that the answer has to come down to a practical approach - even if you could show no infringement why invite a problem if it is not central to your project. You are a creative individual, come up with a unique name for the contest in the film and focus your energy on producing and distributing the film not on defending lawsuits. Good Luck!

The answers provided by Mr. Elman and Mr. Michelen are certainly accurate with regard to trademark but they assume that your use chronologically followed the use of the production company, which I am not certain of from your question. You may, in fact, actually have priority when it comes to the copyright issue. Your copyright exists from the moment the work is fixed in a tangible medium, in this case I assume it was a computer file. You indicated that you have been working on this project "for years." Therefore, depending on when the television series was fixed, you may very well have a prior claim to copyright in the work itself and therefore you could actually be the one with the infringement claim! With regard to the servicemark COOKERY, I searched the USPTO's database (TESS) to see if I could determine when the trademark was applied for and could not find the service marks to which you refer (all I could find was Kraft's dead mark for margarine, Registration No. 1496017). You should also consider whether you might have priority as to common law trademark if you have publicized or otherwise used the mark COOKERY in commerce prior to the production company. There is also a real question here of whether a prior copyright claim trumps a subsequent trademark claim. The point I am making is that these issues are VERY fact specific and I don't think there are enough facts given to make a clear determination. I would advise that you consult with an entertainment attorney prior to making any decisions.

Much like a consumer looking for advice, one of the benefits that I gain from participating in this forum is learning from the answers and exchanges posted by other attorneys. Hats off to Attorneys Elman, Michelen, and Schrum — all are “counselors” in the best sense of the word. Applying legal principles to particular facts requires a broad swath of knowledge, a nuanced understanding of specific rules, the ability to discriminate, a respect for the practical, and the experience and wisdom to focus on solutions.

I write only to add my two cents with regard to copyright matters. Two related principles come to mind: the first is that copyright attaches to each independently-created copyrightable work even if each work is identical and for “infringement” to occur the alleged infringer must have had “access” to the allegedly infringed work. The “priority” of creation of two works really only applies in a copyright analysis when considering whether an alleged infringer had access to a prior-created, and allegedly infringed, work.

In this situation, I think it’s valid to assume that the script for the movie — while a copyrightable work fixed on a computer hard drive — has not yet been “published” as that term is understood under copyright law. Which means that the television production company that created the contest similar to the one described in the movie script could not have had “access” to the script and very likely independently created its particular contest. Both are very good arguments against a potential infringement claim brought by the owner of the script.

Small-budget movie producers can, nonetheless, take simple and inexpensive measures to “protect” the work that they’re trying to create. The principle mechanism is to register the copyright in the script with the Copyright Office (both published and unpublished scripts can be registered -- see link below). The script can also be published on a website used to promote the movie or elsewhere (seek legal advice before doing so) and should be registered with the Writers Guild (wgawregistry.org/webrss).

Filmmakers are also wise to learn the rules regarding the inclusion of others’ trademarks and copyrighted works into their movie (which occurs nearly EVERY time filming is done on a public street and EVERY time a television or radio is playing in the background or when an archival video clip is inserted in the movie). Filmmakers can -- and should -- educate themselves via any number of good legal guides such as “The Pocket Lawyer For Filmmakers,” “The Independent Film Producer's Survival Guide: A Business and Legal Sourcebook,” and “The Independent Filmmaker's Law and Business Guide: Financing, Shooting, and Distributing Independent and Digital Films.” In addition, an enlightening report is available that discusses a filmmaker's “fair use” of others’ works in films (see link below).

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#rp
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/files/pdf/UNTOLDSTORIES_Report.pdf

Most of the previous advice is sound, but I'm afraid you shouldn't be too heartened by the advice that you have a moderately strong case based on copyright law. As Mr. Elson pointed out, the network is unlikely to base their claim against you on copyright law (precisely because that's not their strongest argument), so that bit of advice, while well-intentioned, is irrelevant. Instead, the network is likely to base its claim on trademark law. They can claim that not only are you misappropriating their trademark so as to likely confuse the public as to who's the source of your film (that is, whether they're somehow connected to it), but also that just by using an identical mark, even if the public isn't confused, you're diluting the value of their mark. They'll also base their claim on something called "unfair competition" -- a body of laws that protects one person (in this case, them) from having someone else (you) try to benefit from their labor (the public awareness of their show and its name).

Also, a service mark is a form of trademark. A trademark is used for products (Exxon gasoline, Maytag appliances, Ford cars, etc.), while a service mark is used for services (Roto-Rooter plumbing service, Jacoby & Meyers law firm, H&R Block tax preparers, etc.) .

Finally, you may have learned a costly lesson, but it could have been even costlier. For any film project, you must follow the standard practice of "clearing" all names (characters, businesses, hotels, hospitals, etc.), phone numbers and the like, so that you're not using the actual name or phone number of any person or institution that could then stop you from showing the film, and perhaps even obtain damages if they feel that the depiction in the film of someone or something with the same name defames them. Clearance also extends to any legally protected material you show or use in any of your films -- music, a TV program visible in the background, the cover of a magazine seen on-screen, a radio program heard over the dialogue, etc. To get permission to use all this material, you can use one of the clearance services that handles such matters. Otherwise, you can have these people coming after you also if they ever see their stuff in one of your films. You're lucky, though, that these problems haven't caught up with you till now, but you need to address them now.

THE INFORMATION PRESENTED HERE IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND IS NOT INTENDED, NOR SHOULD IT BE CONSTRUED, AS LEGAL ADVICE. THIS POSTING DOES NOT CREATE ANY ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP WITH THE AUTHOR (WHO IS ONLY ADMITTED TO PRACTICE IN THE STATES OF CALIFORNIA AND NEW YORK). FOR SPECIFIC ADVICE ABOUT YOUR PARTICULAR SITUATION, CONSULT YOUR ATTORNEY.

Most of the previous advice is sound, but I'm afraid you shouldn't be too heartened by the advice that you have a moderately strong case based on copyright law. As Mr. Elson pointed out, the network is unlikely to base their claim against you on copyright law (precisely because that's not their strongest argument), so that bit of advice, while well-intentioned, is irrelevant. Instead, the network is likely to base its claim on trademark law. They can claim that not only are you misappropriating their trademark so as to likely confuse the public as to who's the source of your film (that is, whether they're somehow connected to it), but also that just by using an identical mark, even if the public isn't confused, you're diluting the value of their mark. They'll also base their claim on something called "unfair competition" -- a body of laws that protects one person (in this case, them) from having someone else (you) try to benefit from their labor (the public awareness of their show and its name).

Also, a service mark is a form of trademark. A trademark is used for products (Exxon gasoline, Maytag appliances, Ford cars, etc.), while a service mark is used for services (Roto-Rooter plumbing service, Jacoby & Meyers law firm, H&R Block tax preparers, etc.) .

Finally, you may have learned a costly lesson, but it could have been even costlier. For any film project, you must follow the standard practice of "clearing" all names (characters, businesses, hotels, hospitals, etc.), phone numbers and the like, so that you're not using the actual name or phone number of any person or institution that could then stop you from showing the film, and perhaps even obtain damages if they feel that the depiction in the film of someone or something with the same name defames them. Clearance also extends to any legally protected material you show or use in any of your films -- music, a TV program visible in the background, the cover of a magazine seen on-screen, a radio program heard over the dialogue, etc. To get permission to use all this material, you can use one of the clearance services that handles such matters. Otherwise, you can have these people coming after you also if they ever see their stuff in one of your films. You're lucky, though, that these problems haven't caught up with you till now, but you need to address them now.

THE INFORMATION PRESENTED HERE IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND IS NOT INTENDED, NOR SHOULD IT BE CONSTRUED, AS LEGAL ADVICE. THIS POSTING DOES NOT CREATE ANY ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP WITH THE AUTHOR (WHO IS ONLY ADMITTED TO PRACTICE IN THE STATES OF CALIFORNIA AND NEW YORK). FOR SPECIFIC ADVICE ABOUT YOUR PARTICULAR SITUATION, CONSULT YOUR ATTORNEY.