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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...
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
My hand is up. But I just watch them for the Cab Calloway.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
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.
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.