Forum - View topicNEWS: Sanrio, DC Comics, and Disney Sue Party Company For Copyright Infringement
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yuna49
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The article makes the point that they were wearing counterfeit costumes. If they were wearing licensed costumes, would it have made any difference? I suspect the answer is no, but trademark law is even murkier than copyright law.
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nhat
Posts: 922 |
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They're less incline to chase someone if you don't try to make a profit off their work. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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sepherest
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Bought one of those at Target about a year ago... 
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silentjay
Posts: 304 |
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Actually, you don't get it. The MPAA is acting as the official representation of the movie studios, which is the entire reason the MPAA was created in the first place. |
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Exaar
 Posts: 279 Location: Delaware |
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It's really a question of scale. I'm pretty sure these companies would not sue one guy with a Superman costume going around to kids' parties. However, when you run an entire company based off of selling the image of characters you don't own - that's an entirely different animal.
This guy reminds me of the people who post AMVs on YouTube. Now, I love AMVs and absolutely believe they should be allowed as long as they are not for profit, however I always get a chuckle out o the people who post "I DO NOT OWN THIS MATERIAL AND MAKE NO CLAIM ON IT" as if that is some sort of protection. It isn't, although in the case of AMVs usually they just ask you to take them down. This guy posting on his website "THEY MAY LOOK EXACTLY LIKE SUPERMAN BUT ITS NOT SUPERMAN GUYS HONEST" when the costume is obviously exactly Superman in every detail is just hilarious. Writing a lie down doesn't suddenly make it true! He deserves to be shut down just for the blatency. At least reverse the S on his chest or something and claim its a different character, jeez. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2173 |
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This has very little to do with this case. If they were making bootleg costumes and distributing them over the internet, that would be similar. |
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partially
Posts: 702 Location: Oz |
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YES, you can be sued for your cosplay. Don't expect it to happen though. UNLESS your actually selling your costumes, and even then they probably wouldn't care unless your selling them in quite large quantities.
and NO, you cannot just make a batman movie and put fine-print on it. The problem is that people have been using the fine-print tactic online for years, as if they think it protects them. It does not in anyway protect them, but since so few have been publicly pursued, people mistakenly believe it actually does work. Hence you get outfits like this party company who certainly didn't seek any legal advice before starting their business. The endline is that if you are starting any sort of company, seek legal advice! There are plenty of legal people that give lowcost advice for simple matters like this.
Murky... They would have sued anyway (or at least could of). Because Sanrio et al would want a licence fee for publicly acting as those characters and making a profit from it. Public entertainment for a fee is certainly different to John Smith dressing in is licensed Spiderman suit and running around the streets. |
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Greed1914
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Basically. The big thing that will trigger the interest of a company is if someone is profiting because they will feel that they are due a cut. That's why cosplay isn't a big deal for most companies: nobody is making money from it. Could you get into trouble? Sure. Will you? Most likely not. It's not like these companies have secret agents lurking at cons, and if you have to go through the trouble of tracking down some relatively anonymous person, it just becomes cost prohibitive. But if you're making money, just saying, "Hey, this isn't real and we don't have a license" doesn't work. Also, it looks bad if their website flat-out admits that these costumes were designed to be recognizable as certain characters and that they did so with full knowledge that they didn't go through the proper procedures. They can't even pretend they didn't know better. Since this is a business operating for profit, it draws attention and has somebody that they can find for service of process. More importantly, there might be a deep enough pocket to make it worth the cost. Just a general tip: simply saying something like "Disclaimer" or "Legal information" doesn't necessarily make it legally valid. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
Posts: 2173 |
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You can't get in trouble for cosplay if you guys are defining it as someone making a costume for their own personal use and then they wear it for fun at a convention or something. That's totally legal. Even winning a competition for costume making ability would be legal.
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pat_payne
Posts: 179 |
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One important thing to remember, though is that in all these cases, the companies are not doing it just to be jerks. According to US case law, a trademark or copyright has to be defended against EVERY infringement that the IP holder is aware of, or the trademark can be declared "genericized", or the copyright deemed invalid, in the case of a big infringement suit. In other words: "You knew x was going on and did nothing, so why should you have standing whe you want to fight Y?"
When I was at the University of Oregon, our paper, The Oregon Daily Emerald got copies of the Columbia Journalism Review. In each issue, without fail, would be ads from Xerox, Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson among others begging newswriters not to use "xerox" when they meant "photocopy", or "Coke" when they meant "generic soft drink that may or may not be a Coca-Cola product" (and from what I've heard, they aren't happy about it being shorthand for "cocaine," either, regardless of history...), or "Band-Aid" to mean "generic adhesive bandage". Adobe, BTW, has since gotten into the act, getting irked when people use "photoshop" as a verb, especially when the software used is not PhotoShop. The reason? Aspirin (once a Bayer trademark), Cellophane, Dictaphone. All now generics, when they were once trademarks. And, yeah, cosplay is not an infringement, IIRC (I'm not a lawyer, though), any more than making a Halloween costume for yourself is. |
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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Aspirin's genericization was due to Bayer being a German company when the Allies were busy setting the stage for WWII.
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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Trademarks and copyrights are very different things legally. There is no requirement that copyrights be defended against every infringement. |
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