Rights upheld

[harlequeen]

I just saw this on the bbc website.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-22573733

Interesting to see that someone took a stand and won.

Cheers

[pisquee]

Reading ACID's magazines, there are plenty of such things going on - with small traders such as this, but also massive multinationals. Some are publicised like this case, and quite few in ACID's magazine, but there are plenty going on which are settled out of court, with non-disclosure agreements signed so no one finds out.

[Renniwano]

Glad to see this happening.. fed up with everyone thinking that because they are small they can get away with breaching copyright..

[GoonerGary]

The infringer claimed that they were licensed, if you take a look at his other so called licensed products, they are all identical in style. I doubt he could afford all those 'licenses'.

[Andrew]

If it is the seller I think it is then they aren't a small company and would hold many official licenses. It looks like they tried to be cheeky and do their own similar version and skirt around the grey areas. When doing this it is always open to interpretation of how similar the artwork is to the original whether it infringes or not. There are plenty of other big sellers doing their own version of the like of Del Boy/Michael Jackson etc and get away without a licence as they went far enough away from that grey area. Don't think this was the same type of thing that half of ebay does just take the official images of a brand and sticking it on a mug......... but haven't seen what was actually done so not 100%. Just know they are a main stream seller to the trade as well if it is the same company I thought.

[GoonerGary]

He did say that he tried to get a licence, but that didn't work out. He did enough to 'confuse the public' into believing that they were Button Moon merchandise so that's why he lost his case, he knew what he was up to? Claiming they were official was blatant deception.

So why bother buying Danger Mouse licenses when a formulae of look a like 'official' merchandise was working for him until the court case? When do you believe him? How do you know if you've bought bootleg stock from him?

[Andrew]

According to the report the printer stated the were not official rather than claiming they were legitimate. If you change a design enough you can clearly show the intended target such as seen on many of the Southpark style cartoons of many stars (weenicons or something if I recall). There are a few types of these and even animal based types showing Elvis etc. At what point has enough change been made when that item is still obviously based on a brand that they haven't a licence for. As said before, these are grey areas open to interpretation.

[GoonerGary]

I've misunderstood the last few lines of the report, stating that they were so close to Button Moon that they were interpreted as official merchandise.

But like Weenicons, it's passing off and trading on the reputation of a trademark. I was told that it is difficult to prove a 'passing off' court case when products are not identical. Weenicon Del Boy and Ghostbusters characters are all recognisable as those characters, surely they will end up in court one day? When the trademark owners smell some money to be made...playing the waiting game perhaps??

[galerion]

A good example of someone altering a existing copyrighted character in a way that it would not infringe on the copyright is the character I have set as a avatar. He is Mr DOB and is a redone micky mouse very well known in japan.

[Andrew]

Weenicons were everywhere a few years ago..... Tesco, Next, HMV etc. It looks like they went far enough to show it's not official merchandise but very obviously based on that. What I am saying is that where this line is crossed is anyone's guess.