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Betty Boop and Indefinite Copyright
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently the Fleischer estate has lost a court battle for the rights to Betty Boop, a character created by Grim Natwick at Max Fleischer's studio in 1930. The 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals (based in San Francisco) ruled against the Fleischers, saying in their decision, 'If we ruled that AVELA's depictions of Betty Boop infringed Fleischer's trademarks, the Betty Boop character would essentially never enter the public domain.'"
Maybe they have less money/lobbyists than Disney or something...
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(Idiot)
No sig today...
Sanity in copyright law? Gosh, you look different. Haven't seen you for years. How's life? Must be horrible, you look like an abuse victim. You sure you're not taking drugs?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Once again, a story about a lawsuit posted to /. with a particular spin but very light on facts. According to one of the linked articles:
[Judge] Wallace also said the defendant AVELA Inc, which licensed Betty Boop dolls, T-shirts and handbags under a copyright based on vintage posters, did not infringe any trademark, having not held out its products as "official" or misled customers.
So according to one article Avela licensed the images, according to another they were public domain. According to one, the images are OK because they're not claimed to be "official," according to the other the images are OK because Betty Boop is public domain. What's the real story? Is it about public domain? Is it about the relationship between copyright and trademark? I have no idea. Neither the reporters or the submitter bothered to explain, or apparently, even to find out.
Breakfast served all day!
Since Betty Boop was made in 1930 and Mickey Mouse was made in 1928 then this means that Mickey Mouse is now in the public domain! ...right?
Hey what's with all the laughing?
I'm re-posting one of the comments from TFA here, as it seems to clear up some of the confusion.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Hands up if you've watched a Betty Boop movie in the last decade.
http://new.wavlist.com/soundfx/014/cricket-1.wav
Thought so.
Ganty
the next Betty Boop Bono copyright extension act will bring her right back into copyright land
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
(No)
Mostly harmless.
Real first!
Yep. Sorry about that. First and last time I've done that. Had to once though!
author would always be a person, never a corporation corporations can own copyrights, of course, but they don't enjoy benefits of authorship
otherwise, you wind up with these obscene situations where forgotten media is featured in a new movie/ whatever, and the original author stands to make some ancillary revenues, rather than nothing, from the new exposure, but no one can license the dead content because its too laborious/ tedious/ expensive
sanity please!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You can draw a scrawled mickey mouse 1928 clone on a sticker with the text "Here I am breaking the Mickey Mouse copyright law" and stick thousands of copies of it all over town.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Why give people a lifetime copyright? Why not go back to the original copyright term, 14 years, and build a strong public domain?
Palm trees and 8
Copyright lasts from first fixed form. Please let me know of anything that takes 14 years to complete the sales channel. Or anyone who sells the draft first.
The most overturned court in history - and for good reason. So, you can't put much weight on anything they decide until the adults come and and check their work.
I think he's suggesting we use line-drawn animation for our next generation. Betty Boop never got pregnant. All hail Betty Boop, cure to the population explosion!
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Here's the deal. The Betty Boop movies started in 1930 so they are still under copyright (as are most things copyrighted prior to 1924). Movie posters of that era were typically printed without a copyright notice and prior to 1976 a copyright notice was required to claim a copyright, so the posters are technically in the public domain and always have been (though the character and movies are not). If a company owns a copy of an original movie poster (not a reproduction), they can make exact reproductions of that public domain image (or license others to do so), though it's never been entirely clear how much leeway they have to make derivative works. This ruling would seem to indicate that handbags and t-shirts based on the movie posters are OK.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
This lacks details, but then again why would a Slashdot idiot do any research. Who cares about the "evil" corporations, come up with your own idea and then you to can have a copyright and maybe make some money and become one of the evil rich you slash idiots despise so much.
There's another important case currently at the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Warner Bros. Entertainment, et al. v. X One X Productions, et al., to which AVELA is also a defendant.
The case involves the use of images of Dorothy and friends from the Wizard of Oz. The characters were published, shortly before the movie was released, on promotional movie posters for which copyright was not sought (in those days, you had to register copyrights, unlike today, where the Berne Convention specifies automatic copyright upon publication). However, the district court ruled that the defendants, in selling various products featuring images of the Wizard of Oz characters (though not taken specifically from the movie, which is still under copyright) infringed upon the plaintiff's copyright in the movie because it used the images of the characters.
Of course, what the Ninth Circuit says in the case in TFA is apposite to the case in the Eighth Circuit. If one can infringe the copyright of a work by merely using images of characters depicted therein, then the copyright on a character can be maintained indefinitely by simply using the character in a new work from time to time. Even if the earliest works were in the public domain, the characters in those works would still be protected by the copyrights of the newer works, and this could be extended into perpetuity at the whim of the copyright holder. That clearly violates the "limited times" part of the Copyright Clause of the Constitution (although the Ninth Circuit addressed this in terms of the 1909 Copyright Act, which was the controlling law when the Wizard of Oz movie's copyright came into force, and which indicates that copyrights can't be extended in this fashion).
Grim Natwick, the animation artist who created the character of Betty Boop told a story to Howard Beckerman, an animation historian, and my instructor when I attended School of Visual Arts in NYC.
Apparently, Grim was up for a scholarship to the Art Institute of Vienna, and he was competing against another young artist of the time, a young man named Adolf Hitler. Grim got the scholarship, beating out Adolf.
For decades, Grim blamed himself for World War II. If he'd let Adolf win the scholarship, that guy might have just gone on to become some nameless painter doing still-lifes, instead of becoming the most infamous name in all of history.
I'm not sure how true this all is, but it sounds plausible. Either way, it's a good story related to Betty Boop.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I used to teach a class that dealt, in part, with U.S. copyright issues. Before 1998, I gave them the standard "life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years if it's owned by a business." But after Sonny Bono's Copyright Extension Act in 1998, I just told them "If it's not in the public domain already, it probably never will be." It's a sad statement on what copyright has become (and how corporate interests thoroughly own our legislatures). I fully expect that a similar extension will pass long before 2019, extending copyright once again (forever to remain stuck in 1923, to the delight of the Disney Corporation).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I'll give you 14 years, but I have real trouble thinking of copyrightable projects that take longer than 28 years to finish. There might be 100 tops.
It's more about how long the company thinks they can get the long trail of money. The newest thing seems to be Reboots, like the James Bond movies.
A poster elsewhere had a point about the $ threshold. There's metric tons of stuff that has micro amounts of sales left, but are still locked under the monolithic copyright law. Call it the "disturbed hornet" theory. The company can't sell it itself, but the minute you try to make a derived work, the fake backlash publicity that 3 press releases creates will produce "controversy sales", which are then used to fuel Schrodinger's Lawsuit.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Face it. As soon anything from disney starts to get near entering the public domain they are going to bribe(lobby) anyone they have to in order to get it extended. I don't even care to remember how long they get their copy rights for now. Both parties will probably agree to something before they let it get put into the public domain.
Where are my copy rights?
Look for my fine line of car stickers of Betty pissing on things you don't like(tm) at fine convenience stores everywhere!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The heart of the issue was the chain of ownership put forward by Fleischer Studios, which claims Paramount transferred the rights it bought from Max Fleischer to UM&M TV in 1955. That entity in turn transferred the rights in 1958 to National Telefilm Associates, which became Republic Pictures in 1986. About 10 years later, Republic Pictures transferred the exclusive copyright to Fleischer Studios. Fleischer Studios' scenario failed to convince U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, however. She found for the plaintiffs, ruling that the company had failed to show proof for any of the purported transfers that occurred after Paramount purchased the rights. The three-judge appeals panel agreed, 2-1.
Court Says Right to Betty Boop Is Anyone's Guess
A footnote here:
The expiration of the rights to "Steamboat Willie" gives you the right to produce derivatives of "Steamboat Willie ---" and only "Steamboat Willie."
Eight minutes of silent-era sight gags with a synchronized sound track and a thin narrative thread.
You do not get the rights to other stories, you do you not get the rights to use Disney's distinctive - trademarked - character designs in any of their many incarnations.
Mickey Mouse was created in 1928, two years prior to Betty. So how is he still protected if Betty isn't? I smell corporate lobbying perverting the purpose of the copyright laws.
However if you want to use the -opoly name and/or design elements that significantly resemble the official Monopoly version, it may be cheaper in the long run to actually license it vs risk going to court.
That just like living and owning a small business in Philly, it's cheaper in the long run to pay the protection money versus the risk of going to the hospital with broken bones.
I fully support any harebrained copyright scheme that kills off "It's a Wonderful Life" once and for all.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Gregory S. Brown determined that the film was likely in the public domain in the United States already due to errors in the original copyright formulation.
But who is willing to risk millions of USD testing Brown's argument in a court of law? As long as the answer is nobody, the copyright is still de facto valid.
Want to call it property? Let's tax it.
Unlike real estate and vehicles, most personal property, also called movable property or chattels, is not subject to property tax. Big copyright owners would ask judges to draw parallels to household goods rather than land.
Avatar. James Cameron wrote the first draft in 1995
That early avatar stuff was available though - I read it way back then. So if copyright only lasted 14 years then someone else could have taken it and made their own Avatar movie using it.
They did. In 1995, the story of Avatar was relocated to North America, retitled Pocahontas, and filmed by Walt Disney Pictures. AOL Huffington Post has the details.
The lazy Children and Grand children of Disney are getting peanuts .... it's the Disney Corporation that make the money
When a for-profit corporation makes money, its shareholders make money. How much stock in The Walt Disney Company does the Disney family own?
I remember the disgusting bullshit that spewed from that idiot we all called Senator Bono when he delivered his damaging blow to American creativity.
We was only a Rep.... a congress critter.
I've also hear that technically we don't own land, but can hold a deed to it. Could the same quirk apply to copyright?
It could be argued that the author holds a deed that reverts to the state after the expiration of copyright.
Then I guess we'd have to call it a "copyright registration fee."
Under the Berne Convention, the United States is required to recognize foreign copyrights without such a formality. Should the United States reinstate mandatory copyright registration, watch the major studios first publish their works under a flag of convenience. That may be why the Eldred proposal was phrased as a tax on copyright ownership: any copyright owner who doesn't register would have the unclean hands of tax evasion.
The way Disney was able to defend the rights to Mickey Mouse is that Mickey has been continousley modified throughout its existance. Thus renewing the copyright each time. It looks like to me that the value in Betty Boop is that doesn't change.
Don't get me wrong I don't like this tactic as it gives big companies, like Disney, the ability to retain rights to a chracter indefintly.
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Copyrights are held for the life of the creator + 70 years. Since Walt Disney is no longer a man and is instead a company that should technically mean that it should be for the life of The Walt Disney Company +70 years.
We lost the siege when Disney's forces penetrated via gifts from well-meaning relatives and friends, and the patriarch opted to be "practical" and take the path of least resistance. Only took a few Shockwave games and 1 Disney computer game to get Linux kicked to the curb in favor of Windows. And the Disney merchandise flooded through the breach caused by gifts of several DVDs of Disney movies.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
The way Disney was able to defend the rights to Mickey Mouse is that Mickey has been continousley modified throughout its existance. Thus renewing the copyright each time.
No, whenever they change something, the new copyright only protects the things that were changed. Steamboat Willy hitting the public domain would let people use the mischievous, black and white, rubber hose Mickey of the 20's, but not later changes, like his voice, white gloves, color, losing his tail, acting pretty blandly, etc.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The Mouse.