In 1984, Columbia(Dan Aykroyd's)'s were set to use the title for the movie when they found out the title was previously taken by Filmation's live action show. They were able to secure the rights to the name by paying Filmation a sum of money.
Then I believe Filmation wanted to make a cartoon(this one '86) to capitalize on the huge phenomenon that the Ghostbusters movie was. That is this cartoon that features the sons of the original Ghostbusters. Jake Kong and Eddie Spencer. The agreement for the title was for the movie but when it came time to get the rights for Columbia to go ahead with their cartoon, they wouldn't give up the name again. Therefore they called their cartoon "The Real Ghostbusters"
Quite interesting. I guess Columbia Pictures should've put it in writing that the "Original Ghostbusters" people couldn't make any more works of this nature. Oh well. Nobody actually ever confused the two, did they?
I'm afraid it did, repercussions of which carry to this day.
The huge success of the '84 movie actually resulted in Filmation and Columbia collaborating on a cartoon based on the movie, but when Columbia decided to go work with DiC instead, Filmation decided to produce a cartoon sequel to their live-action TV series from the 70's instead. Since Columbia was only allowed to use 'Ghostbusters' as a title for the movie, they had to call the cartoon 'The Real Ghostbusters' while Filmation could call theirs just 'Ghostbusters', leaving a huge lot of kids wondering what the hell happened to Venkman and Spengler and others...
So there's a huge lot of people out there who still think this cartoon was nothing more than a ripoff.
And, even after one discovered the difference, the TV Guide at the time would still call both "Ghostbusters." So you'd never know which one would come on when you turned on the TV.
To recap folks, It was a live action series by Filmation first, then a motion picture by Columbia a few years later, then an almost combine animated series by both parties, then both studios did their own anmated series based on their own version of the name. Bottom line this and the live action series was done by Filmation while the DIC series and film was done by Columbia.
I kinda remember that I used to wonder if there were supposed to just be two different teams. Kind of like Voltron, where one team was the lions and one team was the vehicles. It wasn't until years later that I learned that the two GB shows had nothing to do with each other.
The series was unrelated to the 1984 film Ghostbusters (though Columbia Pictures did pay Filmation for a license to use the title). Like the film, the series spawned its own animated sequel in 1986. Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis did not know about this show when they wrote their original story. It wasn't until after production had begun and the release of the movie was announced that they found out, so they had to make a deal to get the rights to the name. In the course of their dealings they did not lock down the animation rights and Filmation produced their own cartoon based on this series.