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Can You Really Sue Fortnite For 'Stealing' Your Dance Moves? (theguardian.com)
The creator of the year's biggest game is facing a slew of lawsuits over its alleged use of famous dance moves. But will courts tap to the same tune? From a report: Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star Alfonso Ribeiro alleges that Fornite used his Carlton Dance, devised for a memorable episode of the hit US sitcom, without permission or credit. And earlier this week, Russell Horning, AKA the Backpack Kid, launched his own lawsuit claiming Epic breached copyright laws for including his signature dance move "The Floss." So while the copyright disco fills up and solicitors perform their (wallet) stretching exercises, the big question is: can you realistically copyright a dance move? The answer is yes. Kind of. It's complicated.
"A dance can be protected under copyright law in England under the protection afforded to literary, dramatic or musical works (section 3 (2) of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act)," says Alex Tutty of specialist entertainment law firm Sheridans. "But copyright can subsist in it only when it is recorded in writing or otherwise. It doesn't just exist because you did the dance; it needs to be written down or filmed" This is handy for the Fortnite complainants, because there is video evidence of all of them performing their respective moves. However, it's not quite that easy. "There are all kinds of complexities in practice," says entertainment and tech industry lawyer, Jas Purewal of Purewal & Partners. "For example, who owns the dance -- the original creator, the dancers or the choreographer? How can they prove they actually created something new? How can they show that someone else actually infringed their dance and didn't independently come up with it? The law is pretty archaic, too. It's just not been an area that has had a lot of attention."
"A dance can be protected under copyright law in England under the protection afforded to literary, dramatic or musical works (section 3 (2) of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act)," says Alex Tutty of specialist entertainment law firm Sheridans. "But copyright can subsist in it only when it is recorded in writing or otherwise. It doesn't just exist because you did the dance; it needs to be written down or filmed" This is handy for the Fortnite complainants, because there is video evidence of all of them performing their respective moves. However, it's not quite that easy. "There are all kinds of complexities in practice," says entertainment and tech industry lawyer, Jas Purewal of Purewal & Partners. "For example, who owns the dance -- the original creator, the dancers or the choreographer? How can they prove they actually created something new? How can they show that someone else actually infringed their dance and didn't independently come up with it? The law is pretty archaic, too. It's just not been an area that has had a lot of attention."
No, but it has been suggested before that it we might all be due to do the dew.
This editor should be in deep doo-doo for what he do'd, dude.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Nothing but loosers in this story.
FTFY. :P
Even worse, it was now changed without adding a note about the change. Doing so would have had you thrown out of any respectable publishing business back before Murdoch.
And Slashdot of all places defends that you cannot edit posts (for many good reasons). But that's worthless if silent editing happens, no matter what the reason or how severe. If it is done once, it can be done other times.
No, I don't think you can due the service itself. Now if you tried to sue Epic Games... well still probably no, but there might be a at least a chance under patent law. Don't forget, someone was awarded a patent for playing with your cat with a laser pointer. See 'US5443036A - Method of exercising a cat'. Now under patent law you can do these activities on your own without fear of being sued, but given that Epic is making money by including these dances in the game the plaintive might have a case. But it's going to be slim if at all.
The Ministry of Silly Walks
I find it highly unlikely there are any dance moves in existence that are unique, it seems like you could always find "prior form" as it were.
The Carlton Dance it turns out, was after all stolen from Courtney Cox & Eddie Murphy - and I'm sure they saw it somewhere.
P.S. If someone ends up linking to TMZ on Slashdot for relevant information, maybe that's a good indicator the story was not a good fit for the site...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I feel like intent matters. The gaming company wanted to pimp their product using pop culture references that they expected people would recognize and feel positively about. This isn't some kid in a restaurant who happens to end up on YouTube performing the move for his friends. Epic tried to add value to their product by stealing the work of others. It's pretty much what copyright, performance and intellectual properly laws were written for.
Sorry about the typo in the headline. I deeply regret it.
He built that IP, he can prove that. Anyone can sue for anything, the question is can he win? Of course they'll settle it, Fortnight has millions of idiot children racking up debits for their parents, write a check and keep stacking.
He doesn't own that IP though! If anyone can sue it would be Fox, or whoever it was that produced the show. He was under contract to them when being filmed for that show. Just like if someone creates an unlicensed Han Solo toy it would be Disney/Lucasfilm suing not Harrison Ford
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Greed is a cancer that destroys everything.
No one is perfect. Besides slashdotters secretly love it when the editors make mistakes.
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