Skip to main content

Lightsaber battles nixed by Lucasfilm lawyers

Adaptive Saber Parts — Customizable lightsabers
Unlicensed lightsaber battles beaten down
You don’t mess with Jedi, or their lawyers. A group that hosted free and increasingly popular lightsaber battles in the U.S. and Canada got skewered by Lucasfilm attorneys protecting the film franchise’s brand, as reported on Siliconbeat, the Mercury News tech blog. The end result? Cat fights in space, with swords.

For eight years, New York and Toronto-based event company Newmindspace has been hosting lightsaber battles. Earlier this year, Newmindspace was contacted by Lucasfilm lawyers who were not at all happy that an unlicensed company (i.e., no economic benefit for Lucasfilm) was using what the mouthpieces considered protected intellectual property. Hmmm, sense it makes.

Related Videos

You can’t start using terms like Jedi, Yoda, Sith, the Force, or even lightsaber without a license. Chances are the growing attendance at the lightsaber battles caused a deep enough disturbance in the Force to awaken a trusted sentinel. In December nearly 10,000 people showed up to battle with the shiny Jedi weapons, with 2000 attendees in San Francisco. Apparently an officially licensed Jedi discovered that mind tricks weren’t enough to stop the battles and called in reinforcements.

Related Offer: For the Star Wars fanatic, see here for official gear and accessories

Newmindspace did try for middle ground, calling the events “The Light Battle Tour” and the weapons “light swords,” but those didn’t fly, either. The message came through more clear than a hologram that Lucasfilm really meant it: No infringement — not even anything close.

Quick to respond to the attorneys’ request, Newmindspace changed the event and weapon names again (faster than 12 parsecs perhaps?). It now hosts Cat Tours in Space in multiple cities, with cats fighting with catblades. So stock up on cat whiskers, redub your weapons feline fighting tools, and get ready for a cat fight. May the means for peace and unity be with you.

Editors' Recommendations

Three new Star Wars games are in the works from Respawn
Cal fighting the Ninth Sister in Jedi Fallen Order.

Respawn, the studio behind 2019's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, announced that it is currently working on three Star Wars games in a news post on EA's site, .

https://twitter.com/EAStarWars/status/1485975706848792576?t=n-ynIXfG3a9xcV26rEm90w&s=19

Read more
How to watch the Star Wars movies in order
Kylo and Rey fighting in Rise of the Skywalker

Are you a Star Wars fan considering options for a movie marathon? Are you trying to get a friend or a significant other into the franchise, but you aren't sure in which order to introduce the stories? We get it. When the original trilogy concluded in 1983, the order was pretty simple, and the home-viewing options were fairly limited. Today, the number of live-action Star Wars films has increased to the double digits, and almost half of those movies are prequels.

To help you decide, we've considered the three most popular options: Release order, chronological order, and the so-called machete order. We'll give you the pros and cons of all three options and tell you which one we ultimately think is the best choice.

Read more
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order gets a next-gen version this summer
Cal fighting the Ninth Sister in Jedi Fallen Order.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is getting a next-gen upgrade. The news comes as part of a list of Star Wars gaming announcements ahead of Star Wars Day on May 4.

Released back in 2019, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is an action-adventure game that launched on PS4 and Xbox One. The game got a free patch after the PS5 and Xbox Series X released, which optimized the game for those consoles. This new upgrade is a full-blown next-gen version launching this summer.

Read more