Stellarblade LLC is a Louisiana based film company owned by Griffith Chambers Mehaffey, an independent filmmaker and documentarian. His specialty seems to have been making true-to-life documentaries of real people, though he has also dabbled in some fiction.
Stellarblade’s IMDB entry lists only a few movies, and likely may not represent the studio’s or Mehaffey’s full filmography. Their highest rated film on the site, Lenore, is a supernatural romance inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe poem of the same name. It received 9 reviews with a perfect 10/10 ratings.
While none of Stellarblade’s films seem to be big blockbusters, or even known in the arthouse indie circuit, we can confirm they are real and this is definitely a real film company. You can watch their film Lenore on their Vimeo on VOD here.
As reported by IGN, this Stellarblade film company has now filed suit against Sony and Korean game studio Shift Up for the name of their PlayStation 5 exclusive title, Stellar Blade. The suit also names Sony’s liability insurance company for lawsuits like this.
Mehaffery shared this statement to IGN:
“Mr. Mehaffey registered the stellarblade.com domain in 2006 and has used the STELLARBLADE name for his business for nearly 15 years. Given this long-standing and public use, it’s difficult to imagine that Shift Up and Sony were unaware of Mr. Mehaffey’s established rights before adopting their identical mark.
We believe in fair competition, but when larger companies disregard the established rights of smaller businesses, it’s our responsibility to stand up and protect our brand. The defendants’ far superior resources have effectively monopolized online search results for STELLARBLADE, pushing Mr. Mehaffey’s long-established business into digital obscurity and threatening the livelihood he’s built over more than a decade.”
So, Mehaffey’s main argument is that because of the heavy promotion and the success that the video game Stellar Blade has, it has made it difficult for Stellarblade LLC’s and Mehaffey’s prospective clients to look for them.
Aside from the requisite damages and attorney fees, the lawsuit compels both Sony and Shift Up to be prevented from using the Stellar Blade name again, and that they hand over any materials with “Stellar Blade” on them so that they can destroy them.
We reported that Project Eve would be renamed to Stellar Blade two years ago. Mehaffey also mentions this in the lawsuit, and points out that Sony would have definitely known about his use of the name. We will note here that Sony filed a video game trademark for Stellar Blade on January 2023. Mehaffey filed his own trademark for Stellarblade in June 2023, and send Shift Up a cease and desist in July 2023, nearly a year before its actual release on April 26 of this year.
Once again, we will concede we don’t have the technical knowhow to judge the merits of this case, but it’s definitely not a situation Sony and Shift Up wanted to get tied in. if Mehaffey wins the case, Sony will have to recall all physical copies of Stellar Blade, just to send it to Louisiana for destruction. Shift Up can easily enforce a name change on digital copies of the game, and maybe reprint new discs with that new name. But win or lose, this whole thing will definitely be an expensive, and clearly avoidable, misadventure for Sony and Shift Up.
