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Magician Suing For Copyright Over Magic Trick
Fluffeh writes "Teller, the silent half of the well-known magic duo Penn and Teller, has sued a rival magician for copying one of his most famous illusions. The case promises to test the boundaries of copyright law as it applies to magic tricks. A Dutch magician with the stage name Gerard Bakardy (real name: Gerard Dogge) saw Teller perform the trick in Las Vegas and developed his own version — then started selling a kit — including a fake rose, instructions, and a DVD — for about $3,000. Teller had Bakardy's video removed with a DMCA takedown notice, then called Bakardy to demand that the magician stop using his routine. Teller offered to buy Bakardy out, but they were unable to agree on a price. So Teller sued Bakardy last week in a Nevada federal court."
I'm sure Penn and Teller know "a guy" who can make this deadbeat...[poof!]...disappear into a hole in the desert.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
You'll need it. Or, as Teller might say, " ."
Reminds me of a similar usage of the DMCA and copyright claim for performance art. Remember the Electric Slide fiasco?
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
I'd like to see them cover copyright law on their show...
Bakardy: Hello? Teller: . Bakardy: Heelloo? Teller: . Bakardy: Goodbye. Teller: !
So... Teller's bite is worse than his bark?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I assume this must be a strong test on Penn and Teller's partnership, considering just how hardcore of a libertarian Penn Jillette is. Most libertarians don't support overly strong copyright laws, and many of them do not support any copyright laws at all. Using the DMCA would certainly be against any libertarian's agenda of ensuring everyone gets full and fair rights to a trial and that nobody should need to prove themselves innocent.
Just some bogus claim, lawyer behind a smoke screen and some copyright waving in a trick to confuse a judge..... Larry Ellison does this routine a hundred times the size before breakfast ;-).
This is insane. By all means call the guy a hack, tell everyone he stole your trick, but in the end he's not reproducing your image or any literal representation of something you did. He reverse engineered the trick. What if he changes the rose to a posie? Or makes some other minor change? At what point does the "concept" of your trick become something that's unique and that you "own"?
A Slashdot user, known for his misspelings in his bad analogies, car analogies, and Soviet-era Russia jokes has sued Slashdot's owner, geek.net.
The user alleges that the editors saw him use these corny techniques for replying to Slashvertisements, and they copied the technique for use in their own story summaries.
Geeknet offered to buy him out, but negotiations came to a standstill when the user also demanded that the company buy his "in Korea, only old people read email" technique. The 23-year old negotiating for Geeknet had responded, "What's email?"
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
To patent it, you must publish it. A magician does not reveal his secrets.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
To patent it, you must publish it. A magician does not reveal his secrets.
Modern patents don't tend to publish much in the way of specific information on how something works, they're pretty vague (which is why a patent holder can sue anyone with something that looks even vaguely similar). Actually fully implementing something described in a modern technology patent using just the published information is pretty much impossible these days.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
What you don't know is that Bakardy hired Tesla to create a machine which performs the trick. And, every night after the performance, workers have to remove large boxes full of drowned flowers, secretly out through the stage door and into a warehouse...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
So, yeah, it's easy for us to point and laugh at this and say it's just a useless farce.. but this effects us all actually.
The brief filed states that Teller is suing because the rival's trick supposedly violates a 1983 Copyright he filed for the trick. What is important here is that the Copyright filing DOES NOT describe how the trick functions, but instead HOW IT LOOKS. On those ground, Teller is suing.
I believe this is important. Why? Because I think it is similar to SOFTWARE PATENTS.
Of course, obviously PATENT != COPYRIGHT, but the similarities in this case are still apparent. Unlike every other kind of working patent, software patents generally describe the outcome/result of something instead of the actual mechanism (patents of physical things are based on the WAY it works, not what it produces, SW patents are generally based i the end product).
If suit is upheld it means software patents *could* have an extra life, and indeed if a vendor wants to squeeze out competition they could simply file for a COPYRIGHT on the visible result of the software too.
IANAL, but food for thought.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
Imitation is a form of flattery. He should take it as such, or simply decide to not show off what he doesn't want people to copy. Magicians have been figuring out how other magicians do their tricks for centuries. Unless the secret was actually misappropriated (which means he would have actually broken the law to acquire it), the copier has done absolutely nothing wrong here.
Oh.... and you can't copyright an idea.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
to piss off someone that can make you disappear
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
to sue for government protection of your ideas. I'm sure litigation over reverse engineering of a performance something very near to the heart of free men everywhere.
Comic Sans?
Copyright vs patent. The claim is copyright infringement and not a patent issue.
If the copy-cat magician had used a daisy instead of a rose or had done it with scissors instead of a knife......probably wouldn't have had a case.
You stay classy Teller!
The problem as I see it is that he's explicitly using the Penn & Teller brand in his marketing efforts. That YouTube video is an ad. He is selling stuff off the back of Penn and Teller. So maybe he should really be going after them for abuse of trademark, and get a forward injunction on future sales based on the argument that the initial breach of trademark law is directly responsible for the level of publicity received and the future sales potential of the trick.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Not sure but I think this is not a filing over how it's done but rather a filing over whether or not the performance is a copy of or derivative of Teller's 1983 copyrighted description. I don't know how this trick works but I'm guessing if Bakardy had chosen a different flower, a different cutting device, a different setting, etc and changed it just superficially enough so that the mechanic is still relayed to the viewer he might escape the copyright. But it seems Teller has written this out like a play and it will be up to the courts to decide if Bakardy is infringing on that copyrighted material. You'll notice that this is about copyright and performance, not a patent and methodology.
...
If this lawsuit is over how it's done, I agree with you. I see it similar to software patents where I see a program that does something -- say manages all ID3 tags of your library through HTML table interactions -- and I want to make something behave the same way. Even though I don't have the source code, I figure it out one way or the other. Maybe it's the same way your patent describes, maybe it isn't. It doesn't matter, I've never seen your source code and I'm not infringing on the graphics and layout so why should you be able to sue me when I write something that does (perceptually) the same thing? People who are smart enough to figure out their own solutions shouldn't be prohibited from employing that intelligence
My work here is dung.
You certainly could patent a trick, but not the idea of a trick, it has to be an actual, specific, working implementation of a trick. If you have a working implementation of a good magic trick, you'd be much better off performing it or selling it to someone who will than you would be patenting it. Magicians aren't that desperate for tricks, and your patent registration would more likely inspire someone to think of a different way to implement the same trick than encourage someone to license it from you (although magicians do buy tricks on a regular basis).
In any event, all of this is offtopic, as Teller is not claiming patent violation on the implementation of the trick (and Teller will almost certainly never admit that this guys implementation is the same as his), he's claiming copyright ownership of the actual routine. Basically, Teller is saying that any magician is free to do the trick, and the actual "magic" behind it can even be exactly the same as his (if you can figure out what that is). What you can't do is copy is performance, basically the choreography and staging of the routine. The video of this guys routine was taken down, so I haven't seen it, so I can't say if it's a direct knockoff of Tellers routine, so I don't know how good a case he has. But if the routine itself was copied verbatim, I don't really think Teller's complaint is illegitimate.
The claim against FOX was with respect to violation of the magician's code of honor to not reveal how their tricks are done.
This code enjoys no legal protection, however, and the lawsuit against FOX for that show failed.
Nonetheless, magicians could actually enjoy some legal protection for their tricks under trade secret status.
However, trade secrets do not enjoy any protection at all against being reverse engineered by somebody who did not know the secret.
The only allegation that would have had even the slightest chance of succeeding was to show that the masked magician in FOX's show had misappropriated trade secrets he did not own for broadcast.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Teller is NOT suing over the technical aspects of the trick (how the rose petals are actually made to fall). They are not copyrightable, and indeed are not described in his copyright registration. Rather, he is suing over the dramatic presentation; essentially he is claiming coypright in a short (2-minute) theatrical performance.
I don't think Teler would have protested his competitor adopting the trick itself (magician interacts with shadow on screen but affecting the physical object casintg the shadow) -- he'd have expected credit ("This trick was invented by Teller") but wouldn't have claimed legal ownership. But Teller should be able own the theatre he creates.
And how does Penn and Tellers "let's do the trick with transparent cups/walls/sheets" fit with that first one?
No. I own the patent on using Comic Sans to write sarcasm.
Mr. Teller i hope you lose.
It wouldn't surprise me if Teller hopes he loses too. Penn & Teller strike me as just the type of guys who would sue someone in hopes of losing in order to set a precedent against a bad law. Would that make them anti-copyright trolls?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
For many years Penn and Teller have publicly revealed how tricks are done on their television shows. This is in defiance of organisations of professional magicians such as The Magic Circle (who they deride). In nearly all cases they were not the original devisors of the effect but by their actions they, in a small way, spoil it for everyone. OK, so be it, magic is not very important and they have successful showbiz careers. For them now to complain about someone revealing how one of their tricks is done, and try to use the law to copyright it, is just incredible hypocrisy.