Late to the party, but I definitely want to touch on this:
Believe it or not a
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founded in the early 2000s trademarked the term, even though I remember CYOA books from the 80s or 90s. Worst part is even Chrysler and Netflix settled out of court when slapped with lawsuits.
It's one of those weird situations where money didn't win the day, but at the same time the wrong side won (IMO obviously, not a lawyer).
It's
slightly more complicated than that.
The original Choose Your Own Adventure series was effectively created by Edward Packard (who wrote a lot of the early books). He published a few under their own brand "Adventures of You". But the head of his publishing company was the one who eventually pushed to rebrand those books (and books by other authors) as Choose Your Own Adventure.
That publishing company was owned by R. A. Montgomery - who
also went on to write a lot of the early Choose Your Own Adventure books. His wife also wrote a few of them.
"Choose Your Own Adventure" was
always a brand - and thus legally protected. It's why when the genre boomed in the 80s, and dozens of other publishers started releasing copycat books, they all had to use different names. Twistaplot, Find Your Fate, Which Way?,
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. The brand name was a protected trademark. In fact, it was a
registered trademark (using the ® mark instead of
™ ).
By 2000 or so the original trademark had almost certainly lapsed. And R. A. Montgomery (and his wife) are the ones who formed Chooseco solely and specifically to acquire and maintain the trademark going forward. Their business plan was to basically republish the original CYOA books they themselves had written (which they still owned the rights to), and to expand the brand to other media (including stuff like board games, DVD games, and phone apps). Eventually, they started approaching other writers from the original series to reprint their work as well, and then started approaching entirely new writers to write new books for the Choose Your Own Adventure brand.
Arguably, if there was
a single person on the entire planet who
should have the right to use the brand, R. A. Montgomery's was absolutely that person. About the only other person who even remotely has as strong a claim was Edward Packard (who later started his own company, called U-Ventures, to republish his own books). For all intents and purposes, Chooseco has a fairly strong claim to corporate continuity all the way back to the first CYOA book ever written. They're about as official a continuation as you can get. They basically ARE Choose Your Own Adventure. It's not a case like "Atari", where some random assholes just bought the name of the original company and exploit the former brand name they have pretty much zero creative claim to.
And like it or not, both legally and morally, Chooseco was pretty much 100% in the right to sue Chrysler and Netflix for using the term. Because while ad execs in those companies may have been (wrongly) acting under the assumption that "Choose Your Own Adventure" was a generic term, it isn't and hasn't ever been, even if most people who grew up in the 80s (or later) mistakenly assume it is. And in fact, Chooseco was pretty much
obligated to sue over rights to prevent it from
becoming a generic trademark (in the same way that "aspirin" was originally the trademarked brand name for "acetylsalicylic acid", but now pretty much anyone can use it). If they didn't sue, they could potentially lose the trademark entirely.
All of the 80s kids who grew up reading those books eventually just started referring to the whole genre as "Choose Your Own Adventure", in the exact same way that people refer to all "adhesive bandages" as Band-Aids, all cotton swabs as "Q-Tips", and all tissues as "Kleenex". But the companies that own those brands
still have legal rights, and tend to be
EXTREMELY litigious over them, to
protect them from becoming generic trademarks (like aspirin, cellophane, linoleum, etc.). Which is why if you go to Wal-Mart to buy the cheap store-brand knock-offs you'll be buying "Acetaminophen/Pain Reliever" instead of Tylenol, but why they can call "aspirin" Aspirin, in spite of the fact that it was originally a brand name that only applied to Bayer's brand. And why Wal-Mart would be in trouble if they branded their product as "Tylenol" and Johnson & Johnson found out about it.
Basically, people online can call every "make your own story choices" book a CYOA if they want, but the moment you try to market a PRODUCT using that term, you're breaking the law and your ass has a target on it.
...and to bring it back to the original subject, Chooseco actually put out something that most people here probably WOULD describe as a Visual Novel:
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Also, as an aside, "Kinetic Novel" is
itself another term that is technically a trademarked brand term that isn't universal, even if people in places like here use it that way.
