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Free Lightsaber Event Now Battling Lucasfilm's Lawyers (siliconbeat.com)
For eight years the arts collective Newmindspace had been staging free lightsaber battles, and in December they set a world record with 9,951 "combatants" simultaneously participating in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle. But then in January they received a letter from the copyright attorneys for the Star Wars franchise. "We immediately stopped using the words 'lightsaber,' 'Jedi,' 'Sith' and 'The Force,' " the group's co-founder told the technology blog of the San Jose Mercury News, saying they've still been "aggressively pursued" for the last three months. '''In March we received further communication stating 'The Light Battle Tour' and 'light sword' were still too close to their trademarks, and we moved to settle the dispute to avoid legal action." Their new solution involves referring to the weapons as "catblades", and they've re-branded their upcoming series of events (which begins on April 30 in San Jose) as the "Cats in Space Tour".
Star Trek conventions are licensed. All you guys have been duped by the marketing.
Do you think a lawyer would do this on their own without somebody giving them money and a task to do?
Absolutely. Prenda Law is well known for 'buying' rights from porn companies in order to use them to extort money from defendants. It's very doubtful that any company ever paid them to go after anyone, though the people behind Prenda law certainly had fun setting up shell corporations to try and make it look like it.
Analog Magazine cover, 1969
The rod “ something in appearance like a cross between the flame of a welding torch and the arc of a static electricity charge crackled from the end of the rod even as it burst from the end of the rod the discharge from Galyan’s rod met the discharge from Slothiel’s head on, and the two lines of white fire splashed harmlessly into an aurora of sparks"
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
From Wikipedia: In 1994, engineers at Apple Computer code-named the mid-level Power Macintosh 7100 "Carl Sagan" after the popular astronomer in the hope that Apple would make "billions and billions" with the sale of the computer. Apple used the name only internally, but Sagan was concerned that it would become a product endorsement and sent Apple a cease-and-desist letter. Apple complied, but its engineers retaliated by changing the internal codename to "BHA" for "Butt-Head Astronomer". Sagan then sued Apple for libel in federal court. In November 1995, Apple and Sagan reached an out-of-court settlement and Apple's office of trademarks and patents released a conciliatory statement that "Apple has always had great respect for Dr. Sagan. It was never Apple's intention to cause Dr. Sagan or his family any embarrassment or concern". Apple's third and final code name for the project was "LaW", short for "Lawyers are Wimps".
I think they should call these blades Litigation Exit Sabers or LitESabers for short.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
They have to protect themselves against trademark dilution, or they could lose the trademark. The more amenable solution would've been to give these guys a license to use those trademarks for their event for a paltry sum like $1. But I guess Disney wants all such events to require you pay the $100+ admission to Disneyland / Disneyworld.
And at this point, I don't think the franchise cares about any more advertising, free or not. It's pretty much reached the saturation point in mindshare.
In Japan, self-published works are called doujin works. Many of them are derivative of existing works, like commercially published manga and anime. What's special about them is that they are openly sold. Comiket, the most popular event for buying and selling doujin works, has over 30,000 individuals and groups selling stuff, and over 500,000 total attendees. Twice a year. Not everything there is based on existing works, but a lot of it is.
It's not technically legal to sell these derivative doujin works, but it's still allowed by the vast majority of copyright owners because the derivative works 1) don't duplicate or compete with the original, 2) help to create a fandom that draws in more people and sustains interest in the original work, and 3) train new talent who will go on to publish their own commercial works. The doujin scene is important enough that the prime minister recently announced that derivative works will continue to be allowed even if the TPP becomes law (or in other words, it will still be left up to the copyright owners to decide if they want to allow them or not).
A particular success story in the doujin scene has been the Touhou game series, which has been authored and self-published by just one developer since the 90s. The series wouldn't have even a fraction of its huge popularity without the massive amount of derivative works based on it (manga, art, fanfiction, games, anime, music). There's now loads of commercially produced Touhou merchandise, and several manga series, and the series could be commercially even bigger if the author wanted it to be. But it would never have gotten this far without the doujin scene, and might not even exist in the first place without it.