I recently read three very interesting cases in the entertainment industry regarding some legalities going on with music and film. These topics were discussed on a podcast called Entertainment Law Update and the host’s name was Gordon Firemark, Esq. The first topic that I really found interesting, was about the recent ruling on a case involving Star Wars creator George Lucas, and the prop designer of the Storm Trooper character that he hired for the movie.
This was mind blowing to say the least, because George Lucas commissioned the designer Andrew Ainsworth to use Lucas’s drawings to create the mold for the actual character that was used in the movie. After the success of the movie’s release in 1977, Ainsworth setup a website to sell the costumes of the Storm Trooper from the original film and Lucas did not appreciate that.
George Lucas filed a lawsuit against Andrew Ainsworth and the case went all the way to the British Supreme Court. To make a long story short, the court ruled in Ainsworth’s favor, saying that he could sell the costumes on his website and there wasn’t anything that George Lucas could do about it. The judge ruled that the costumes are functional works and not artistic works, which allowed Ainsworth to dodge the copyright infringement bullet (BBC, 2011).
The Court of Appeals and the High Court had previously ruled in Ainsworth’s favor, but Lucas felt that infringement did occur in the United States. Andrew Ainsworth does not own any assets in the Unites States, but resides in the United Kingdom and Lucas could not win in the United Kingdom (BBC, 2011). If this issue had began in the United States, then Lucas might have had won this case. It really blew me away that George Lucas lost this case, because he is the creator of the Star Wars brand.
I was shocked about this case, because I thought that George Lucas had more protection over his franchise than this. I am not sure why he did not have the sculpture trademarked somehow, so the prop designer would still have to get his permission for use.
The second case that I found that was interesting to me was about the Hangover 2 film and the lawsuit against Warner Brothers by a tattoo artist seeking damages. One of the characters in the movie had a tattoo on his face that was exactly like the one that former boxer Mike Tyson made famous.
The tattoo artist by the name of Victor Witmill had designed a tattoo for Tyson and the tattoo was featured in the film. The article mentions that Warner Brothers copied the tattoo without asking Witmill’s permission, and ended up placing the tattoo on another actor’s face (Belloni, 2011).
I remember hearing about this case and I wondered what was going to happen at the end of it. Victor Witmill wanted to stop the film from being released, but the film still came out anyway in spite of the lawsuit. Warner Brothers ended up changing the cover of the DVD release of the movie, probably as part of the settlement.
The last podcast that I found was about Justin Beiber and a fan that invaded his privacy recently. The case involved a fan that somehow found Justin Beiber’s personal cell phone number and began texting the pop star repeatedly. Beiber ended up posting the fan’s phone number on his personal Twitter account, and the fan received 26,000 messages (Firemark, 2010).
It turned out that Bieber had four and a half million followers on Twitter, and the fan had to change his phone number (Firemark, 2010). It just goes to show that you should not invade another person’s privacy. This kind of thing could be a real headache to fight in the end. The podcast also mentioned that this case could possibly become a small claims issue, but did not say definitely that it will for sure.
I believe that some fans can really take things too far at times and this is one of those situations. Just because someone loves their fans, it does not necessarily mean that they want their privacy compromised. I am sure that I would feel the same way about having a fan that did something like this.
