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AnimeHeretic:

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A bit of a difference between borrowing one character and making changes (which happens in anime all the time, especially the hentai parodies as I mentioned earlier) and making a multi-million dollar franchise off of someone else's intellectual property.

Apparently, the Doyle estate thought otherwise, and sued LeBlanc.

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I hadn't thought of it earlier, but just now as I type this I recalled some incidents from the 1980's where during the US-Japan trade wars, I seem to recall there were some legitimate complaints of the Japanese legal system protecting Japanese companies that violated patents of some American companies.

And American companies are ready to arrest third-world countries which violate patents on bio-engineered food by growing their own.

GATSU wrote:

AnimeHeretic:

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A bit of a difference between borrowing one character and making changes (which happens in anime all the time, especially the hentai parodies as I mentioned earlier) and making a multi-million dollar franchise off of someone else's intellectual property.

Apparently, the Doyle estate thought otherwise, and sued LeBlanc.

And lost IIRC. Whereas with Monkey Punch's version of Lupin III, foreign companies had to change the chara name for several years over the issue.

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I hadn't thought of it earlier, but just now as I type this I recalled some incidents from the 1980's where during the US-Japan trade wars, I seem to recall there were some legitimate complaints of the Japanese legal system protecting Japanese companies that violated patents of some American companies.

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And American companies are ready to arrest third-world countries which violate patents on bio-engineered food by growing their own.

I fail to see the connection you're trying to make here. I was just trying to point out the irony of protesting a patent violation in light of Japan's past. I'm not saying that the Japanese company here wasn't wronged. I'm not attempting to justify everything America or its citizens do somewhere in the world.

Nope, you can't sue the Federal Government without the permission of the... Federal Government. Very rarely is that allowed either (normally only outrageous circumstances like human rights).

Stueypark wrote:

Nope, you can't sue the Federal Government without the permission of the... Federal Government. Very rarely is that allowed either (normally only outrageous circumstances like human rights).

True. When the the gov't went after tobacco companies in the late 1990's, I thought the US Gov't should be a co-defendant, given that they subsidize tobacco farmers. But, Janet Reno's DOJ said "nope." Maybe I'm an idiot, but AFAIK, the vast majority of the harvested product is going to make cigarettes-- which makes the government just as guilty IMO.

The source for this newest article is this Japanese article: http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20041228-00000161-kyodo-ent (originally from Kyodo Tsushin)

But Joe Monson from Team Ghiblink also sent us this article (in English)

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20041230a8.htm

and added

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I recommend suggesting to people that they should email or call the
FCC and politely demand (that just sounds wrong) that they resolve
this issue with Shogakukan. The FCC's email address is
[email protected] (as given at the bottom of their website:
http://www.fcc.gov/).

Guess their too busy "looking for smut on TV."

And a suggestion, get The Smoking Gun Involved. See if they can get the documents. [email protected]

If my post seems a little disjointed, it's because I partied a little too hard last night, being the first New Year's Eve since I turned 19 (which is the legal drinking age in Canada). Also, I'm trying to reply to various topics that have come up in this thread, so bear with me.

Okay, we all know that if something is meant to be a parody, then it's considered to be on the up-and-up. I'm sure that if anyone were to ever try to take the creators of the show Tripping the Rift to court, they wouldn't have much going for them, because that show is so obviously one giant spoof. Though for what it's worth, "Weird Al" Yankovich(sp?) has to get permission from the necessary people when he decides to do his parody covers. He may be putting his own lyrics on top, but he's still using specific music that was written by someone else. (Someone brought "Weird Al" up, so I figured that this was worth mentioning.)

Also, the thing about doujinshi, fan-fics, and even stuff such as 8-Bit Theater is that even though these people are using images, characters, etc. from a pre-existing source, they usually give credit where it's due. Whether it's something as simple as "This is my Trigun fanfic" or more specific like "Copyright 2001 - 2004 Brian Clevinger. Some images are property of Square-Enix." Nobody is claiming to have come up with the original concept or characters, and making mention of the pre-existing source makes for fair use. Also, the fact that people usually aren't trying to profit from stuff like this adds to the fair use argument.

Personally, I'd love to see at least see Geneon/Pioneer -- the American rightsholder for Trigun -- publicly go after those responsible for that campaign ad that used Wolfwood's altered likeness without permission and without giving credit where it was due. And the fact that they used it in a context that came off to me as somewhat racist is reason for even more scrutiny. I mean, really now -- racist Republicans? Who would have ever thought of such a thing? (I know that my reverse profiling is basically hypocritical, but not without reason.)

It's really a shame that Doraemon isn't liscensed. At least that way the American company who releases it would have a much easier time going after the FCC than the Japanese company. And as far as I'm concerned, using this altered version of Doraemon is a case of intellectual property theft, simply because no credit is given where it's due. And the fact that this is a government agency means that they really should hold to a higher standard than, say, some relatively unknown punk band using an image for a then-unliscensed anime on the cover to their debut album. (I gotta give props to them, though. They used a DBZ image before it was ever on TV here. Either someone in the band or at the label is/was a hardcore geek, or it was all just a matter of chance that they ended up using a DBZ image. Nothing in the liner notes makes any mention of DBZ, though -- not that they'd be needed, at this point.)

I like comic sans

um this whole topic is kind of silly i mean at first i almost could see a resemblance just thinking about pictures of doraemon i had seen a while back. but upon actually looking up pictures of doramon and doing a side to side comparison...well they don't look much alike at all. other than the fact that they have big round heads and smallish eyes, not to mention not looking a thing like a real cat, they are really not very alike. i mean just look here http://www.nephco.com/doraemon/ then at the character on the fcc site...they look about as much alike as any two cartoon cats. just to show it compare some of the characters on this page http://www.millcreekbengals.com/cartoons.htm many of them look very similar despite being done by different artists at various different decades.
the whole thing is so silly that the only reason shogakukan is likely even persuing it is cause so many people seem to see a resemblance and they figure they have a chance to score a few bucks out of the fcc. frankly i could go up to a hundred elementary school kids ask them all to draw cats and i would likely get a very similar looking character even if not one ever even heard of doraemon....
in fact looking at that page of cartoon cats again..,maybe the creator of heathcliff should try suing instead they are even vary similar colors among other things...go figure...

I wonder how many people know the story of Lupin and the Castle of Cagliostro.

Arsene Lupin rescues the princess Clarice from the wicked duke... at least that's how Maurice LeBlanc wrote it... and Miyazaki ripped it off nearly line by line.

Ugh, you're all a bunch of whiners. So what if they're similar? That means nothing. Even if the guy they hired to make the character copied Doraemon (yes, a person, not an entire group, would have copied him) it doesn't really matter. I mean, things get copied all the time.

It's not like comparing Kimba to The Lion King, so all of you shut up.

Raoh wrote:

At the beginning of ending of most commercials you will hear "My name is George W. Bush, and I apporove this message".

If he approves the messages, then doesn't that mean he knows and understands the content of said messages?

Yes. Welcome to American politics. Most politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, do this. I'm sure there are a few decent politians that actually look over their speeches to understand them or actually give a crap about what they're babbling on about, but a majority of them are just talking figureheads for special interest groups and businesses. Kerry really isn't that different or much better than Bush. I feel bad for the Democrats who are deluding themselves. I voted for Howard Dean because he seemed to ahve somewhat of a mind of his own. Well for a time. Then one goofy speech and teh emdia dn his own party tears him down and he's yet another Democratic Party lackey.

Anyway, this Doremon / FCC is just lame. At least the Wolfwood Bush add thing was hilarious and blatant. This FCC thing could be a coincidence, or just one uninspired design major who got a crappy job for the FCC. Either way, it's lame. Hell if the Doremon people didn't complain this alme character on a lame kids website for the lame people at the FCC would barely have been seen. Now this lame thing gets dragged into the spotlight. Did I mention all this was lame?

-Xenos

Personally, I doubt this would have gotten more than 2 posts if this had been the DNC doing this. You ought to decide if this is an anime forum or a political forum.

When they(Bush+whoever created the ad) used Wolfwood, the first time i saw it it looked like the used Yami Yugi's eyes...

eh the whole wolfwood thing is kind of annoying to still see people talking about. i mean has long since been removed and the election is over. and i seriously doubt whoever made the add had any clue what character they were using and such. i mean just doing a google image search for the word "evil looking" yeilds about 4 or 5 anime characters on the first few pages. on on top of that most of them are not even bad guys, heck on of them was spike from cowboy bebop. likely the person who made the add did much the same thing. didn't notice the characters were copyrighted through together the ad and called it a day.

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NEWS: FCC uses Doraemon on Site