Movie Monsters Help Set Intellectual Property Precedents Shannon P. Duffy 08-10-2009
http://www.law.com/jsp/law/LawArticleFriendly.jsp?id=1202432899599 In the movies, it seems that monsters are always up to no good -- making mayhem or setting fires. But in a federal court in Philadelphia last week, a couple dozen movie monsters made some important new law and set a few significant precedents in the area of copyrights and trademarks that will help to define the doctrine of "fair use" for years to come. In Warren Publishing Co. v. Spurlock, the publisher of several popular movie monster magazines from the 1950s and '60s claimed that its copyrights and trademarks were violated by a recently published book that chronicles the art of a man whose paintings appeared on more than 50 of its magazine covers. But lawyers for J. David Spurlock and Vanguard Productions -- the publishers of the book, "Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos" -- argued that their inclusion of the magazine covers was protected by the fair use doctrine because the main purpose of the book was to celebrate the art of Gogos, a purpose far different from the goal that the magazine publisher had. U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson agreed, finding that there was a "transformative nature" to the use of Gogos' paintings in the book because it was designed to be a biography and retrospective of an artist who had created dozens of memorable images of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and other staples of classic monster movies. [....] -------------------------------------------------------------------- Forwarded from LawfulUse mailing list Publicknowledge.org
