Info311
Week 060410
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Interesting thought re. Trademark - google. “just google it.” this is trouble for google! they may not have trademark control of this word anymore.
“The Law of Ideas”
- are there legal protections for mere ideas?
- yes. see “buchwald vs. paramount”, re. eddie murphy’s “coming to america”. buckwald came to paramount with the idea for this movie years ago, notes were taken, project did not materialize. promised payment if movie developed. eventually canned. a few years later, coming to america is released, and it’s buckwald’s ideas. buckwald sues, wins.
- also “murray vs. NBC”. murray had the idea for the cosby show basically (even mentioned cosby), pitched it, canned. then nbc has the cosby show. whoops! but, he lost this case. the courts reasoned that this kind of show was already in the works. the state of the art was such that this idea wasn’t particularly novel at this time.
- Basically, this is shaky ground. Best to protect yourself.
Moral Rights: Continental systems of Intellectual Property.
- European ideas state that there exist “moral rights.” independently of the author’s economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and object to any distortion, mutilation of other modification of or other derogatory action in relation to the said work, which would be prejudicial to the author’s honor of reputation.
- Basically, there are rights that the author of a work has to it that cannot be given up or bought away. This runs counter to the Anglo-american tradition.
- Also allows for riders on future sale.
Consequences of the Berne convention
- We’ve signed on to this, via TRIPS/WTO. We now have some weird things to work out in our copyright tradition.
- In some cases, it is advantageous to sue someone in France for violation and mutilation of things.