it seems that while some pieces may have fallen out of copyright, other
more recent ones may have not
so just saying "gumby is (or is not) in PD" does not seem to make sense
to me
i think you can only ask the copyright question about a specific piece
(show)
trademark, as you point out, is a different matter completely
JD Lasica wrote:
>I promised I'd ask an attorney friend about our friend Gumby, and
>Andrew's idea of dusting him off and remixing him for the 21st
>century. Here's what she says:
>
>
>This "Gumby Problem" is a lot like the Peter Pan case I worked on
>(and eventually settled) at Stanford last year. The problem is: what
>happens to trademarked characters once the copyrighted work falls
>into the public domain. (I'm assuming here that Gumby is in fact in
>the PD.) In the Peter Pan case, it's absolutely clear that the
>original story was in the public domain (published 1911). So our
>client used the characters and made a sequel to Peter Pan that is set
>in this century. Our client had the characters act differently, put
>them in new "modern" situations, and even challenged the idea that
>growing up is necessarily a bad thing. The Peter Pan copyright owner
>claimed both copyright and trademark infringement. There are cases
>that state pretty clearly that the characters also fall into the PD
>when a copyright expires, so the copyright question is, in my
>opinion, fairly clear (though we fought about it in the Peter Pan case).
>
>The TM question is trickier because generally a TM lasts as long as
>it is not abandoned by the owner and is properly used to identify a
>good or service. You can still parody the mark without infringement
>or dilution concerns (thanks to our First Amendment), but you always
>need to keep an eye out for whether you are using the mark in a
>manner that will cause customer confusion (infringement) or whether
>you are possibly diluting the Gumby mark. (Dilution claims stem from
>either "blurring" [e.g., causing a famous mark to lose some of its
>distinctiveness due to use of a similar marks] or
>"tarnishing" [e.g., associating a famous mark with unpleasant or
>unwholesome products/services] the mark.)
>
>I hope this is helpful!
>
>Best,
>Colette Vogele
>San Francisco
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>Yahoo! Groups Links
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--
Markus Sandy
http://apperceptions.org
http://spinflow.org
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