Fire Alarm Companies

Another day, another story of the law could be locked to the public. Back in February we wrote about an important thing about the public space with The Wizard of Oz and some other films. Prior to 1976, of course, you had to, they have to register works covered by copyright. A company called AVELA acknowledged that some promotional posters for The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and some Tom and Jerry Cartoons were not registered (or in some cases were registered, but not extended), and thus officially into the public domain. It then made T-shirts from some of the pictures on the poster. The lower court held was a very confused sentence, in which he confessed to the original posters in the public domain, but then said the character is still copyrighted, even though the films came later, because the new features works for the public sector and penetrated protected them. Or something. Make this even more complicated when it comes to Wizard of Oz , Is that the original books are finally in the public domain, but not the original film.

On appeal, the Eighth Circuit Court seems to have more or less supported the original decision, albeit for different reasons. The court says that the advertising materials in the public domain. But then says that the new plants (the designs on the t-shirt) results in a derivative work, that 'comes into conflict with a valid copyright. "Conceptually, that makes sense. You can 't take public domain work and go out of it then, that gives you free rein to bring in other copyrighted work. But it 's disturbing to see how the court then determined that such derivative works created in this case. It basically says that because the actors go out into the film, the characters with special properties, which penetrated into the original works, including the use of still images, the public domain are able to infringe on the copyrights of the representations of the characters.

We agree with the district court's conclusion that Dorothy, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind, and Tom and Jerry each exhibit "consistent, widely identifiable traits" in the films that are sufficiently distinctive to merit character protection under the respective film copyrights....

AVELA has correctly pointed out that the scope of copyright protection for the characters in the film The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind to the levels of character expression in the films, which is beyond the expression in the books on which they were based limited. See Silverman, 870 at 49 ("[C] opyrights helped secure protection in derivative works only for the incremental additions to the originality of the authors of derivative works.") F.2d. While true, this has little practical effect in this case, like a book expected to describe a character in general, very little of the expression of the character in the movie ....

The film actor representations of the characters at issue here seems far rely on elements of the expression to the dialogue and descriptions in the books. AVELA has no instance in which the distinctive characteristics, facial expressions, voice or speech pattern of a film character in the book equivalent of a literary description, reminiscent to a significant extent, what the actors are shown to identify likely. Simply put, there is no proof that you can be in a position of the striking details such as Clark Gable's performance before watching the movie Gone With the Wind, even if you had read the book to visualize before. At least, covers the scope of the film injected copyrights all visual depictions of movie characters in question, except for all aspects of characters that were in the public domain by the advertising materials.

Than THREsq notes, it 's this section about how to send Hollywood lawyers may in a bit of a tizzy lengthen as it may, the attacks on the public sector appears, with the suggestion that a general "characters' features added be a film, even work from a public domain are copyrighted. Given there are a number of adjustments being made The Wizard of Oz based on the Public Domain Books, some lawyers worried that this ruling Warner Bros. leverage over the other films are:

As we mentioned in our last article on this topic, there are nine Wizard of Oz Projects currently in development, by one count, including a big-budget 3-D film DisneyDirection Sam Raimi and James Franco that 's should be a prequel to the classic film.

Could these films have very, very careful in the future?

A lawyer believes.

"The court 's statement that the film copyrights cover' recognizes the figures that there is often a quintessential version of a literary character, in the public \ exists' all visual depictions \ s mind as a result of a popular film , "says Aaron Moss , The chair of litigation at Greenberg Glusker. "Every filmmaker who wants to create a new version of a literary work - even one in public - must be careful not protected by copyright, elements of characters to use as the first in the protected film versions of the works of course if it. is represented by the characters of live actors, can be easier said than done. "

If you receive didn 't that if you create a film that was Wizard of Oz entirely on the book, if one actor does pretty much something that indicates a similarity with the movie version and not the book version, it might be hurting. At least to make this completely rules at any attempt, a nod or homage to the original film. But more importantly, even if only in the nature of being an actor, one actor gives one of these characters with similar characteristics, the 1939 film ... that can be infringing.

And that's insane. That goes way beyond the intent of copyright law, and again seems to destroy the laughable notion that there's a real split between protection of ideas and expression.

Permalink | Comments | E-mail this story