Disney+ has renamed their upcoming Coleen Rooney documentary after Rebekah Vardy trademarked the term ‘Wagatha Christie.
Coleen, 37, won her legal battle against Rebekah, 41, after accusing her of leaking stories about Coleen to the press.
According to The Sun, the documentary will now be called Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story, still referencing her detective skills in the title.
The carefully worded title is unlikely to spark another legal battle with Rebekah as the word ‘Christie’ is not used.Â
A source said: ‘Disney lawyers are comfortable with the new title even though it is obviously close to the phrase which Rebekah owns the right to, and would have almost certainly prevented them from using.
Series: Disney+ has renamed their upcoming Coleen Rooney documentary after Rebekah Vardy trademarked the term ‘Wagatha Christie’
Dispute:Â Coleen, 37, won her legal battle against Rebekah, 41, (pictured) after accusing her of leaking stories about Coleen to the press
‘If she still feels it’s too close to ‘Wagatha Christie’ then she would have to contend with the streaming giant’s legal team who are among the most formidable in the world of entertainment.
‘Which will be a relief to Coleen who faced the prospect of not being able to make a nod to the very phrase which her investigative skills gave birth to.’
Although ‘Wagatha Christie’ couldn’t be used in the title, Coleen can still speak the phrase in the documentary if she wishes.
Rob McLaughlin, a lawyer and intellectual property expert, told The Telegraph:Â ‘The words ‘Wagatha Christie’ can be spoken out loud in a TV show just the same as they can be written down in newspaper article.
‘A trademark registration doesn’t give its owner the right to prevent any and all use of the trademark – only in situations where this would cause consumer confusion or be detrimental to the reputation or distinctiveness of the trademark.’
Coleen recently opened up about the trial and documentary in her bombshell interview with British Vogue.
Discussing the upcoming three-part series, she said: ‘It’s brought up a lot of emotions. I felt like everyone else has spoken about it except me. And it’s my story to tell.’
Coleen also branded Rebekah ‘odd’ and said her ‘evil’ texts read in court made her sick.Â
Title: The documentary will now be called Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story, still referencing her detective skills in the title
Trademark:Â The carefully worded title is unlikely to spark another legal battle with Rebekah as the word ‘Christie’ is not used
She explained how she came up with a plot to foil the person who had been leaking stories, by planting false stories to her private account and only making them visible to Rebekah’s account but didn’t tell a soul what she was up to, not even a lawyer.
Coleen said: ‘I feel like a lot of people still don’t understand what happened, from beginning to end. But what I said in that post, I still stick by today.
The WAG revealed that her plan to publicly share the leaker on Instagram in October 2019, was all her own.
She said: ‘In the night I started thinking about what I was going to do. I just wanted these stories to stop.’
But did she do a classic firing up of the Notes app at 3am?
She laughed. ‘No. I like a pen and paper – a pencil and rubber, actually, so I can rub it out. So I started writing what I wanted to say and then the next morning I put it out there. That was the start of something that I would never have expected.’
Coleen said she didn’t tell a soul what she was about to do. ‘No. [The part] my friends and family were most surprised at me [for was] putting the post up.’
She didn’t show it to Wayne or her mum, nor, despite much conjecture, to a lawyer. She woke up, typed it up and put it on the internet. Then she took Kai and one of his friends indoor skydiving.
She felt empowered and relieved she’d kept her plans to go public under wraps, saying: ‘If I want to do sunnin’ – and I know I’ll get talked out of doing sunnin’ – I’ll just go ahead and do it. I didn’t want no one telling me not to do it.’
On Becky, who is married to footballer Jamie Vardy, 36, Coleen said: ‘I felt like she was in the same world as me. She was in the public eye. I thought she would be protective over that kind of thing.
‘We could associate because our husbands had played for England together. But she doesn’t live around here. She wasn’t a friend. I’ve never socialised with her.’
Coleen admitted that when Rebekah said she was consulting lawyers, she was spooked. Rooney was immediately spooked.
She hadn’t pre-legalled her statement and had assumed relaying what had happened to her was allowed..
She said: ‘You see social media people calling people out in such nasty ways and I was thinking I wasn’t that nasty.’ But her stomach turned.
Adding: ‘I’ve never been in a legal case before so for me it was scary. What a horrible experience. The thing I was dreading the most was actually going to court.’
Having her say:Â Coleen recently opened up about the trial and documentary in her bombshell interview with British VogueÂ
Coleen was both anxious and fuming that she’d been ‘dragged to court’, saying: ‘I found it hard not letting on.
‘It was so weird that first day, actually sitting on a bench together. It was so difficult in that courtroom… especially watching her on the stand. It was quite painful. I felt uneasy.
‘Obviously she was going through it. ‘I thought, ‘Why have you put yourself in this position?’ It was not nice to watch. To this day she cannot for the life of her understand why Vardy took her to court. She is ‘odd’.’
Coleen was awarded costs by the court and £800,000 of the total amount due was payable immediately.
Rebekah was said to have scored one of the worst own goals in British legal history after a High Court judge dismissed her evidence as ‘evasive or implausible’ and accused her of deliberately deleting WhatsApp messages central to the case.
Her agent, Caroline Watt, was also accused of intentionally dropping her phone in the North Sea. During the trial, some of Rebekah’s personal texts to her Caroline were read out.
Coleen said: ‘The texts knocked me sick. They were just another level. When I was reading them I was thinking: the evilness and the hatred that they had for someone that they don’t even know.’
While Coleen seems to bear no ill-will towards Rebekah, she said: ‘I’m a forgive and forget person, I can’t be bothered with things going on and on. But this is obviously totally different.’
‘You can’t go wrong if you’re telling the truth.’
Wagatha Christie timeline: How Coleen and Rebekah’s war unfoldedÂ
September 2017 to October 2019 – The Sun runs a number of articles about Coleen, including that she travelled to Mexico to look into baby ‘gender selection’ treatment, her plan to revive her TV career and the flooding of her basement.
October 9, 2019 – Coleen uses social media to accuse Rebekah of selling stories from her private Instagram account to the tabloids.
Coleen says she spent five months attempting to work out who was sharing information about her and her family based on posts she had made on her personal social media page.
After sharing a series of ‘false’ stories and using a process of elimination, Coleen claims they were viewed by one Instagram account, belonging to Rebekah.
Rebekah, then pregnant with her fifth child, denies the allegations and says various people had access to her Instagram over the years.
She claims to be ‘so upset’ by Coleen’s accusation, later adding: ‘I thought she was my friend but she completely annihilated me.’
The public dispute makes headlines around the world, with the hashtag #WagathaChristie trending.
How it all began: On October 9, 2019, Coleen Rooney, now 36, accused Rebekah Vardy, 40, of leaking ‘false stories’ about her to the press in an Instagram post (above)Â
February 13, 2020 – In a tearful appearance on ITV’s Loose Women, Rebekah says the stress of the dispute caused her to have severe anxiety attacks and she ‘ended up in hospital three times’. Coleen says in a statement that she does not want to ‘engage in further public debate’.
Shortly after Coleen’s public accusation, Rebekah – who was pregnant and on holiday in Dubai at the time – denied any involvement (above)Â
June 23, 2020 – It emerges that Rebekah has launched libel proceedings against Coleen.
Rebekah’s lawyers allege she ‘suffered extreme distress, hurt, anxiety and embarrassment as a result of the publication of the post and the events which followed’.
November 19-20, 2020 – The libel battle has its first High Court hearing in London. A judge rules that Coleen’s October 2019 post ‘clearly identified’ Rebekah as being ‘guilty of the serious and consistent breach of trust’.
Mr Justice Warby concludes that the ‘natural and ordinary’ meaning of the posts was that Rebekah had ‘regularly and frequently abused her status as a trusted follower of Coleen’s personal Instagram account by secretly informing The Sun of Coleen’s private posts and stories’.
February 8-9, 2022 – A series of explosive messages between Rebekah and her agent Caroline Watt – which Coleen’s lawyers allege were about her – are revealed at a preliminary court hearing.
The court is told Rebekah was not referring to Coleen when she called someone a ‘nasty bitch’ in one exchange with Ms Watt.
Coleen’s lawyers seek further information from the WhatsApp messages, but the court is told that Ms Watt’s phone fell into the North Sea after a boat she was on hit a wave, before further information could be extracted from it.
February 14 – Coleen is refused permission to bring a High Court claim against Ms Watt for misuse of private information to be heard alongside the libel battle. A High Court judge, Mrs Justice Steyn, says the bid was brought too late and previous opportunities to make the claim had not been taken.
April 13 – Ms Watt is not fit to give oral evidence at the upcoming libel trial, the High Court is told as the case returns for another hearing.
The agent revokes permission for her witness statement to be used, and withdraws her waiver which would have allowed Sun journalists to say whether she was a source of the allegedly leaked stories.
April 29 – Rebekah ‘appears to accept’ that her agent was the source of allegedly leaked stories, Coleen’s barrister David Sherborne tells the High Court. He argues that a new witness statement submitted by Rebekah suggests Ms Watt was the source but Rebekah claims she ‘did not authorise or condone her’.
Rebekah’s lawyer Hugh Tomlinson says the statement did not contain ‘any change whatever in the pleaded case’, with her legal team having no communication with Ms Watt.
May 10 onwards – The trial lasts seven days
