TORONTO

The force is strong with these lawyers.

For eight years, Toronto-based events company Newmindspace hosted lightsaber battle events across Canada and the U.S., with its first in front of the Royal Ontario Museum.

But since vowing to beat the world record for the largest lightsaber battle in December, creating a massive mob of 10,000 Star Wars fans in California and Seattle, the public space event piqued the eyebrows – and awakened the lawyers – of Lucasfilm.

Newmindspace co-founder Kevin Bracken said he nearly had a heart attack when he received a cease-and-desist letter in January from Lucasfilm, which in 2012 was acquired by the Walt Disney Company, alerting them about the copyright infringement. The dispute was settled last Friday.

“It kind of became difficult for them to ignore us, considering Lucasfilm and Disney are in California, so we’re kind of on their front door,” he said. “We thought, ‘We’ll call them lightswords, just like hundreds of glow toy vendors online.’ We called it ‘The light battle tour.’ We didn’t hear back from them for a month and a half. And then they came back with a vengeance.”

In other words, expect a lawsuit. Bracken, 29, said his lawyer estimates the suit would have been at least $250,000, plus a permanent injunction from selling any lighted swords.

Newmindspace has now instead renamed its tour as “Cats in Space.” Glowing toy weapons called, “cat blades,” will be distributed, along with laser guns, to avoid any infringement. The six-city tour will begin in the U.S. this May, with a stop in Toronto in August to raise money for the Make-A-Wish-Foundation.

“The settlement requires us to stop using the word, ‘lightsword’ or ‘light battle’ or anything substantially similar, which is kind of vague, but I think the intention is clear,” said Bracken. “We need to get as far from the trademark as possible.”

You could even say, from a trademark, far, far away.