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Imperial Storm Troopers Skirmish in Latest IP Battle
fm6 writes "According to guardian.co.uk, George Lucas is suing the designer of the Imperial Stormtrooper armor. Andrew Ainsworth took the original molds he used to make the props for the movies, and has been using them to make outfits that sell for up to £1,800 (US$3,600) apiece. Ainsworth has countersued for a share of the $12 billion that Star Wars merchandise has generated since the first movie."
A spokesman for Lucas Licensing said: "We would never want to discourage fans from showcasing their enthusiasm for the movies. However, anyone who tried to profit from using our copyrights and trademarks without authorisation ... we will go after them."
This guy made one of the really cool things about Star Wars!! We all see the sort of nonsense Lucas came up with without this guy :-( Nothing in the newer 3 movies was there anything as memorable as Stormtroopers. Am I wrong??
TFA doesn't really say anything about the details of the original contract, but it seems ridiculous for someone with the money of God to come after a little guy who did so much to make his movies distinctive.
Careful What You Wish For....
when you can just use a RepRap?
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
Kaiser Wilhelm II is suing them both for use of the term "Stormtrooper".
RTFA: A california court ruled in favor or Lucasfilms, but since the designer lives in the UK, Lucasfilms has to sue there. Good luck getting a UK court to go along with the same tort bullshit the US passes off as civil law/justice.
If the contract signs over all work to Lucas Film, this guy may be in a bit of a bind. If it doesn't, Lucas Film is in a bind.
I bet you two different contracts are presented.
Logical mode off: Its a goddamn Storm Trooper Costume! He was making them for 3k! You make millions of dollars! Go home!
That's a bit too cynical. We don't have all the information here. If Lucas went hired Ainsworth and told him what he wanted and Ainsworth developed the detailed design and the molds, then the basic idea was Lucas's and the design was a work for hire, the rights to which belong to Lucas. It's just like when an engineer designs a chip for Intel - the design belongs to Intel, not the engineer.
It is possible that the arrangment was different, e.g. that the designer came up with the design and offered it to Lucas, in which case the rights would depend on what sort of contract they entered into (that is, whether Ainsworth merely licensed Lucas to use the design or whether he sold the rights outright), but the fact that a court has already ruled in Lucas' favor suggests a scenario like the one above. If so, it isn't a case of the courts screwing the little guy - it is a standard case of work for hire.
I have to agree with you here. As a consultant i often subcontract work out and make contracts with these people before the work begins. When they are done making artwork or code that i did not want to make myself the deal is that i own the work. If they wanted the ability to use the work for others i would consider working a deal with them however once the contract has been completed and all the work becomes mine. Same thing here i feel. The biggest part is the base idea came from Lucas. He wouldnt have even made the mold in the first place if it wasnt for lucas hiring him.
He was hired to do a job. He created the items to fit Lucas' vision. It wasn't as if he created them and them sold them to Lucas.
How do you know this? I actually RTFA and while I might have missed it, they seemed pretty light on pertinent details like this. I would imagine that it's quite common for a studio to outright purchase prop designs and rights the same way they do pretty much everything else related to a film. If the guy from Weta who created Andúril started selling exact duplicates of the sword don't you think NewLine would call him up for a chat?
It seems pretty straightforward - if Lucas bought the prop design then this guy is at fault. If Lucas only paid for him to come up with a design then it comes to a question of can the Stormtrooper be trademarked as part of the franchise? How about replica lightsabers?
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By default independent contractors under English law own their work. Assuming this guy was contracted rather than employed, unless otherwise specified by a contract he owns copyright.
If, as the article says, Lucas bought the helmets by the unit already manufactured that would imply that the guy was an independent contractor. If the guy was an employee he would have been paid at a flat rate and it would have been irrelevant to him home many Lucas then had manufactured. If you buy a dozen prints of an artist's work that doesn't mean you own the original.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
So, let me make sure I have this straight....
The Imperial Stormtrooper armour is *not* suing the designer of George Lucas?
emt 377 emt 4
... for the Special Edition lawsuit, where Andrew sues first.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Ugh I'm tired. A correction.
Obviously the prop designer is not bound by that specific contract, but he might have had an employee contract or the prop/mold he used might still technically belong to the studio or Lucas or something. Obviously the courts in California found something but the article is light in this area.
So you do work creating IP for people and then refuse to give them the rights to the IP that you create? Let me know how that works out for you.
I think you will find that the majority of companies who get design work done by independent contractors would have watertight agreements transferring all of the relevant intellectual property to them, for obvious reasons, i.e., that people like you can't then attempt to weasel around their rights with dubious contractual terms and thereby hold them hostage.
Honestly, I am generally all in favour of limiting the IP rights of companies, but when you do work for a business creating IP and then try to suggest that it's somehow reasonable and equitable that you retain the rights to all of the "original art work" that goes into it then you are being borderline dishonest. Certainly it's reasonable for you to retain IP you create which is not specific to that job; but it would be entirely unreasonable to refuse to relinquish the rights to the 99% finished "work in progress" version of a website, for instance.
The Windows example is silly, because Windows is not uniquely crafted to each user's requirements (if only), it is a generic piece of IP that is licensed and relicensed.
Read Pynchon.
It would be extremely unusual for a costume designer (or art department, or set designer, or special effects model builder or whatever) to work for anything but "for hire" or to be able to claim any ownership of their work afterwards. Since this was the 70's and Star Wars was not expected to be the blockbuster hit most likely the guy did the work for a few thousand bucks. There could always be exceptions, like HR Giger, but that's extremely rare and only when the guy's a big name already and can call his own shots.
Still, even if this is the case, I don't think he got screwed by not making millions for his designs. I mean, that's the nature of the job, and these productions would collapse under their own weight if everyone who has any input could claim a piece of ownership.
That said this kind of thing isn't all that unusual-- costume makers selling replicas of their designs to fans. I guess it's a little different to be selling molded stormtrooper armor instead of a copy of Galadriel's gown, but still, it's generally accepted as a perk that they can make a little side business out of it, assuming the products are custom orders and not mass produced for costume shops.
So Lucas is probably in the right, legally, but a complete dick morally. Big surprise.
Believe it or not, and even now as well as 30 years ago, quite a bit of business is conducted without formal contracts. And for big dollar amounts. In the UK I can't say for sure, but in most US states, a verbal agreement is binding...but it then boils down to who what to who and when they said it. But as this case points out, its always best to get paper. And that's true even when all parties are "friends"...its amazing how fast money can change that friendship.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
The design wasn't even any good. One blaster shot and they're finshed!
> trademark, yes. copyright, no.
You are correct in saying that you have to defend a trademark but do NOT have to defend a copyright, so I'll add on to that. IANAL, but unless there was a copyright assignment with a 'written memorandum of transfer' (I learned that one from SCO v. Novell; copyright law being federal, it applies to the whole USA), THE COSTUME MAKERS own whatever copyright there could be on the costume. Though I assume that Lucas owns the trademark. True, it could be a 'work for hire', but I think that only applies to individuals working for some company (and it would probably have to be spelled out), so I don't know.
I should also mention that while trademarks have to be defended, you are NOT required by law to be a dick when defending them (even if it seems that way). I think it was Second Life where they sent the "Get a First Life!" people a "Permit & Proceed" letter that let them know they were *okay* with using the trademark.
Lucas? Sounds like he believes he deserves all the money from anything related in any way to Star Wars, even if he did absolutely none of the work in creating it, simply because he came up with Star Wars to begin with.
So yeah, I'm not really going to take either side here, but I just want to say that if they had any sense, they'd come up with some kind of arrangement that doesn't involve suing each other, or there won't be any money left to fight over.
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This isn't the first frivolous lawsuit he's done lately. He tried to sue the pants off of this warehouse company a year ago or so because he kept his storage facility in bad condition and one of his R2D2 props got moldy.
I don't know the details of it, but my grandmother in law works for a sister company of the warehouse that was getting sued. Apparently it was enough that if it hadn't been dismissed, it would've sent them into immediate bankruptcy.
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The US has had plenty of time to mutilate it.
:)
Just like how you guys have mutilated the English language.
It certainly doesn't stop blasters or light sabers. What use is it?
No sig today...
Isn't she a little short for a storm trooper?
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Bzzz! Wrongo! Maybe exact replica lightsabers that carry a certain name have to be licensed, but Jeff Parks sells Parks Sabers that are completely non licensed. A lot of his designs look just like the ones from the movies. Lucas tried to sue him before Ep 1 came out and was unsuccessful because he couldn't produce the copyrights.
Everyone here keeps assuming that Hollywood and the Lucas of today is the same as they were back in 1975-76. It was a completely different world back then. Nobody cared about merchandising rights or sequel rights or any of that garbage. That's why Lucas totally owns Star Wars, because Fox didn't give a shit about the rights.
More than likely, since Lucas didn't expect it to take off the way it did, he had a verbal agreement with the guy to make some armor. Lucas probably didn't give a shit at the time since it was only going to be a stand alone space opera. I'm just wondering why Lucas waited so long if this guy has been doing this for a while.
The two dialects have diverged in different directions in the past couple of centuries and neither is correct". The inhabitants of Tangier Island, Virginia, supposedly speak with a dialect as close to Elizabethian English as exists anywhere in the world. If anybody can say that their English is true, it is these people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E
Guys like Lucas and Spielberg sucked the creativity right out of mainstream movies. Back in the 70's, movies like the Godfather could play in a mainstream cinema and even command a big budget. Now those kinds of movies are relegated to the arthouse, with tiny budgets, and with no room for them in multiplexes (that cater only to the Michael Bay movie of the moment).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Brian Muir is known as the sculptor of the original Stormtrooper armor, and Nick Pemberton is believed to have sculpt most of the helmet. Andrew Ainsworth's company manufactured the outfit. Of course, there must have been some interaction between these people during the process. Some prototypes were made, and refined. It is possible that Liz Moore (who sculpt C-3PO) was involved, but she died in 1976, so it is difficult to tell.
Andrew Ainsworth's company refined the molds after the production of the first movie to simplify production. It is believed by fans that Ainsworth kept some of the latter molds, which he when setting up his new business in recent years, modified back to produce casts more like the screen-used pieces. Some pieces of his Stormtrooper outfit are recast from pieces made by fans in recent years, who never gave Ainsworth permission to recast their sculpts.
If you want a Stormtrooper helmet and/or armor, then there are other "fan-made" armor that is actually more accurate to the original (recast from original screen-used armor), and also of better build and much cheaper.
Lucasfilm is not going after fans making and selling Stormtrooper armor. They are only going after those who are making a high-profile business out of it, like Andrew Ainsworth.
On the contrary, Lucasfilm is often cooperating with a fan organization called the 501st Stormtrooper Legion, which, being the largest costuming club in the world, has a few thousand members owning Stormtrooper costumes. George Lucas himself has appeared at events to meet and greet members and thank them for their appearance. The name "501st Legion" has even entered official canon, given to a group seen in the last movie. Almost all of the Stormtrooper cosplayers in the 501st Legion bought their armor from one of the dozen makers that exist - none of which has any licensing agreement with Lucasfilm. Licensed armor does not exist.
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You Brits invented the language. We Yanks merely perfected it. ;)