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The ongoing legal battle over the trademark of the term "comic-con" between The San Diego Comic-Con (or to give it it's official name: Comic-Con International: San Diego) and the Salt Lake Comic Con flared up a bit yesterday when the SLC group claimed a win by being granted a trademark:

Every year on 26 April, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) celebrates World Intellectual Property Day to promote discussion of the role of intellectual property in encouraging creativity and innovation. As the recent lawsuit between the Marvin Gaye estate and Pharrell Williams showed, intellectual property law is just as relevant as ever.

The post A World Intellectual Property Day Quiz appeared first on OUPblog.

When “The Case of the Black Macaque” scooped media headlines this summer, copyright was suddenly big news. Here was photographer David Slater fighting Wikipedia over the right to disseminate online a portrait photo of a monkey which had, contrary to all expectations and the law of averages, managed within just a few jabs of a curious finger, to take a plausible, indeed publishable “selfie”. Did Slater have the right to control the image since it was his camera on which it was recorded, or was it free for the world to use on the basis that he was not its author, the true creator being the crested black macaque who, for all her charm and dexterity, was neither a real nor legal person and therefore disentitled to any legal rights?

Disputes like this make great headlines, but cause even greater headaches for the intellectual property (“IP”) community. Most have little legal substance to them and are interesting only because of their facts, but that’s what drives journalists’ involvement and readers’ interest, making it easier for the media to attract paying advertisers. By the time they pass through the media machine these tales are frequently mangled to the point at which IP lawyers can scarcely recognise them. In one recent case involving a well-known chocolate brand, a company was said to have patented its copyright in England in order to sue a business in Switzerland for trade mark infringement.  To the layman this may sound fine, but it’s about as sensible to the expert as telling the doctor that you’ve got a tummy ache in your little finger because your cat ate the goldfish last night.  We IP-ers try to explain the real story, but monkeys and selfies are far more fun than the intricacies of copyright law and, by the time we’ve tried to put the record straight, the next exciting story has already broken.

The next selfie episode to hit the headlines, far from featuring a portrait, was quite the opposite end of the anatomical spectrum. Model Kim Kardashian objected that Jen Selter’s selfies constituted copyright infringements of photos which had been taken of Kim Kardashian’s bottom (occasionally colloquially described as her “trademark” bottom, but not yet registered in conventional legal fashion). Here the only questions IP lawyers address are (i) are the pictures of Kim Kardashian’s backside copyright-protected works and (ii) does the taking by Jen Selter of selfies of her own posterior constitute an infringement? For press and public, however, the issue morphs into the much more entertaining, if legally irrelevant, one of whether a person has copyright in their own bottom.

There are many IP rights apart from copyright and they all have their macaque moments. Trade mark law is full of episodes of evil corporations stealing words from the English language and stopping anyone else using them. Patent law (in which the legal protection of body parts very much smaller than bottoms, such as sequences of DNA, does have some relevance) is garnished with tales of greed and intrigue as people seek to steal one another’s ideas and avariciously monopolise them. Confidentiality and the right to publicity have their own rip-roaring encounters in court as amorous footballers who are “playing away” seek to hush up their extramarital (that’s one word, not two) exploits. Meanwhile, the women with whom they shared moments of illicit intimacy seek to cash in on their news value by selling them to the highest bidder. For IP lawyers the legal issues are serious and, when cases come to court, they achieve precedential status that governs how future episodes of the same nature might be handled. For press and public, the issues are different: who is the footballer, who is the woman — and are there any pictures (ideally selfies)?

Seriously, the rate at which not just eye-catching tales like those related above but also far less glamorous tales result in litigation, or even legislation, makes it hard-to-impossible for practitioners, academics, administrators and businessmen to keep abreast of the law, let alone understand its deeper significance for those affected by it: businesses, governments, consumers, indeed everyone. Publishers like OUP are increasingly raising the tempo of their own responses to the IP information challenge, utilising both formal and informal media, in print and online.  Since legal publishing is largely reactive, we can narrow the gap between the time an exciting new event or legal decision hits the popular media and the point at which we can strip it down to its bare legal essentials. But it will take more than a little monkeying around before we can close that gap completely.

Featured image credit: Camera selfie, by Paul Rysz. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

The post Selfies and model bottoms: monkeying around with intellectual property rights appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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How does the law operate when intellectual property rights overlap? When a creative output, be it a photograph, a piece of music, or any artistic work, is protected by multiple intellectual property rights such as trademark and copyright, or a patent and data protection, it can be challenging to manoeuvre through the overlapping rights. Intellectual property law seeks to defend the rights of the artistic creator, and protects the expression of ideas, but when these rights overlap in both law and practice, how do they interact?

This is a question that Neil Wilkof, member of the Bressler Group, special IP counsel to Herzog, and Fox & Neeman, Israel, was faced with when a student asked him how overlapping trademarks and copyright might operate. Here, Wilkof discusses how this question might be tackled:

In practice, intellectual property rights very rarely occur independently; there is usually an overlap. Here, Wilkof explains how the disjuncture between written law and practice can be addressed by looking at intellectual property from a practical, rather than theoretical, perspective:

With the issues of overlapping intellectual property rights in mind, Wilkof goes on to discuss how this area of law might change and develop in the future:

The post The past, present, and future of overlapping intellectual property rights appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Movie Wars: Saturday Edition

*YAWN*

DC wins, barely.  They showed the new Wonder Woman costume, and what sounds like an awesome trailer.

Marvel?  More cast for “Antman”, the announcement of “GotG 2″, and a teaser peek for “Age of Ultron”.

DC didn’t announce anything from other movies (as rumored by Nikki Finke.  Here’s her analysis of CCI so far). Could be DCE still hasn’t quite figured out the production schedule, especially for what follows SvB.

Marvel didn’t discuss anything past Ant-Man.  So, “Untitled” is “unknown”.  Might there be something announced at NYCC?

Marvel did win the TV battle, with the possible appearance of Mockingbird on Agents of SHIELD.  Although Ra’s al Ghul will appear in the next season of Arrow.

Guess I’ll go see Scarlett Johansson star in a superhero movie instead… (with Morgan Freeman!)

Here’s the updated movie scorecard:

*Peter Potter?

He is best known for playing Harry Potter – who could use an invisibility cloak every time he wanted to go unnoticed.
And it seems Daniel Radcliffe has come up with his own way to mingle with the masses as he demonstrated at Comic-Con at the weekend.
The 25-year-old donned a full Spider-Man suit as he walked around the showroom floor at the pop-culture convention… even stopping for pictures with oblivious fans.

* Zombie Walk Turns Critical as Car Hits Bystander

Officials said the victim was taken to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries. She’s expected to recover.

Two other people were also left with minor injuries.

The car’s driver has been cited, but he will not be criminally charged.

The incident remains under investigation.

This is not the first time something like this has happened.

Here in New York City, there are hundreds of police officers stationed along parade routes.  Sometimes, the parade will be stopped for traffic to cross.  How many of San Diego’s finest are on patrol downtown during Comic-Con?

* A struggling animator asks questions during the Family Guy panel.

 * Bleeding Cool shows the actual cease-and-desist letter from CCI to Salt Lake Comic Con.

I’ll let our legal eagle analyze this, but I always thought it was the hyphen that made the name.  There are a lot of “comic con” events out there, one run by a corporation which could easily fight CCI in court.

Here are the trademarks CCI owns/owned.  Myself, I look forward to the San Francisco Comic-Con.

* GoBankingRates.com calculates the cost of attending Comic-Con,

but makes too many mistakes to be link-worthy.  ($740 for airfare?)  Their total: $1,615.  Note that this does not include shopping, but does include cosplay.

And that’s it?!?

Okay… let’s see what the news services offer:

The Associated Press and AP Images

Getty Images

Reuters

Al Jazeera America

European Press Agency

(The source page.)

Want to filter out the celebrity photos?  Add “atmosphere” to the search.

—

Okay, that’s it for Saturday.  I’ll be back tomorrow to wrap up the news feed, and then there are some specific posts.

.

So what’s happening over at DC Comics, with trademark registrations?

Not much.  Aside from the various listings for the new “DC Peel” logo, all I found was:

• WOLF AMONG US (computer games, no listing online)  (Filed June 20, 2012)

Here’s the copy from the USPTO:

Why would DC Comics be registering a video game?  This is probably the subtitle for a game featuring a known superhero or team.

Now, if we search by the attorney of record, we find listings for Warner Entertainment in general.

• MUGGLE (and many other Harry Potter marks)
• OUTMY WINDOW (a photo sharing service)
• WILLY WONKA
• TOOFAB.COM (a celebrity news website, in conjunction with TMZ)
• WALLEY WORLD (Oh, the possibilities!  “Who’s the moosiest moose we know?”)
• THE SANDMAN (television series)

Nothing too surprising.  Aside from no listings for “Dark Knight Rises”.  Or for comic book titles, like “Blue Beetle”. The trademark for the Sandman comic book was not registered until 2011, so that seems de rigeur.

.

The recent rumors which seem to confirm a Guardians of the Galaxy motion picture seem to have been foretold by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  A search for “Guardians of the Galaxy” shows twenty registrations, many of them made since 2010.  (Here’s an example.)  The most recent was made June 15, 2012, for

IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: Computer services, namely, creating an on-line virtual community for registered users to participate in and hold competitions, showcase their skills, improve their talent, participate in incentive award programs, get feedback from their peers, form virtual communities, trade, buy and sell virtual goods, conduct virtual tours, facilitate interaction among users, rank users, engage in social networking, and participate in on-line discussion boards; providing temporary use of non-downloadable software to enable viewing, previewing, sharing, manipulating, and creating blogs regarding computer games via global computer networks and electronic communication networks for use in connection with computers, mobile computers, media players, cellular phones, wireless devices and portable and handheld digital electronic devices; Providing temporary use of non-downloadable software to enable viewing, previewing, sharing, manipulating, enhancements for computer games, online games, and game applications and information relating to computer games and game enhancements via global computer networks and electronic communication networks for use in connection with computers, mobile computers, media players, cellular phones, wireless devices and portable and handheld digital electronic devices

Sounds a bit like the recent Avengers Facebook game…

If one searches for “Marvel Characters, Inc” as the owner, then all of Marvel’s filings appear.  What, besides GotG show up?  Why are they significant?

Well, a trademark does protect a title and character name from being used by another company, like “Captain Marvel”, especially in licensing and marketing.

So, if there are numerous filings, then it’s probably something big, which will generate lots of merchandise, like a movie.  If it’s just one or two filings, then it’s probably to claim a title.  If it’s for toys, clothing, or other merchandise, especially for a specific title or character, then it’s probably due to appear on the big and little screens.

The USPTO uses this classification for comic books:

IC 016. US 002 005 022 023 029 037 038 050. G & S: Comic books; Printed periodicals in the field of comic book stories and artwork.

Such as for the title “Villains for Hire” (filed November 2, 2011).

————-

This is interesting!  Usually, Marvel just registers a name.  This logo was filed on August 9, 2011, for what seems to be a media logo. [IC 041. US 100 101 107.]  Also for IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038; IC 016. US 002 005 022 023 029 037 038 050; IC 028. US 022 023 038 050

Might this be a new “Marvel” logo for a new product line?  It’s a bit over-the-top… a triumphant eagle on top of the world, with that “bow tie” letter on the bottom.

Nope…  Google searche