I was really, really bewildered to hear that any lawyer could've told him he had a right to do what he was doing. It flew in the face of everything I'd ever learned about copyright law in Introduction to Property. Mind you, again, I'm not even a lawyer yet, let alone a copyright lawyer, so i may be missing something. I should probably point out that what I learned was pretty basic, and boiled down to this:
Copyright = is the right to own noncorporeal things pertaining to intellectual property: names, distinctive marks, words, etc. It is the method by which people earn money for intellectual stuff. Rowling does not own the book you bought from Coles; you do. But she owns the words in that book. You can sell your physical book; you cannot sell the words to somebody else (ie, somebody writing a screenplay for a movie).
The reason for copyright is that it is the only way for somebody who works creatively to gain money from their work. If it didn't exist, JK would be penniless and Scholastic would be filthy rich.
Copyright is supposed to protect the integrity of the work (so nobody can "damage" it by selling it in a changed fashion, eg sell a book to a publishing company that has the exact same plots but names the characters Harry Potsmoker, Ron Welfarecase, and Hermione Grrrl, thereby making it sound stupid and making people have less respect for it) and to protect the creator's ability to make a profit from their work.
If you do either of the above ("damage" the work, or cut into the creator's profits), you are in trouble. You have violated copyright.
To get out of trouble, you can say that you didn't damage the original work (which, I don't care what Rowling says right now, I don't think SVA did - I've always thought the Lexicon was brilliant) and/or that your work won't cut into the profit-making ability of the creator.
So if you publish a book of essays re. Harry Potter, you can honestly say that you weren't competing with Rowling because she's never said she had plans to publish a book of essays. Or, in a real case I read for this class, a beauty company that wanted to trademark the name "Pink Panther Beauty Products" was sued by United Artists because they felt the beauty company would infringe on their copyright of the words "Pink Panther" but they lost because beauty products weren't something United Artists was going to put out there anyway, so the beauty company wasn't treading on their toes. And even in that case, the case didn't go completely in the beauty company's favour - they were warned against making any link to the movie Pink Panther, because that would infringe upon United Artists' rights.
http://library.findlaw.com/1998/Nov/1/129008.html
So yeah. With that info, I'm really at a loss to see how any ethical lawyer could've told SVA he was OK to do this. Again, maybe if I was a copyright lawyer I'd see it differently, but from what I understand, most of them agree with Rowling.
Now, whether the law is right or not is a totally different topic ;)
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Date: 2008-04-15 07:20 pm (UTC)I should probably point out that what I learned was pretty basic, and boiled down to this:
Copyright = is the right to own noncorporeal things pertaining to intellectual property: names, distinctive marks, words, etc. It is the method by which people earn money for intellectual stuff. Rowling does not own the book you bought from Coles; you do. But she owns the words in that book. You can sell your physical book; you cannot sell the words to somebody else (ie, somebody writing a screenplay for a movie).
The reason for copyright is that it is the only way for somebody who works creatively to gain money from their work. If it didn't exist, JK would be penniless and Scholastic would be filthy rich.
Copyright is supposed to protect the integrity of the work (so nobody can "damage" it by selling it in a changed fashion, eg sell a book to a publishing company that has the exact same plots but names the characters Harry Potsmoker, Ron Welfarecase, and Hermione Grrrl, thereby making it sound stupid and making people have less respect for it) and to protect the creator's ability to make a profit from their work.
If you do either of the above ("damage" the work, or cut into the creator's profits), you are in trouble. You have violated copyright.
To get out of trouble, you can say that you didn't damage the original work (which, I don't care what Rowling says right now, I don't think SVA did - I've always thought the Lexicon was brilliant) and/or that your work won't cut into the profit-making ability of the creator.
So if you publish a book of essays re. Harry Potter, you can honestly say that you weren't competing with Rowling because she's never said she had plans to publish a book of essays. Or, in a real case I read for this class, a beauty company that wanted to trademark the name "Pink Panther Beauty Products" was sued by United Artists because they felt the beauty company would infringe on their copyright of the words "Pink Panther" but they lost because beauty products weren't something United Artists was going to put out there anyway, so the beauty company wasn't treading on their toes. And even in that case, the case didn't go completely in the beauty company's favour - they were warned against making any link to the movie Pink Panther, because that would infringe upon United Artists' rights.
http://library.findlaw.com/1998/Nov/1/129008.html
So yeah. With that info, I'm really at a loss to see how any ethical lawyer could've told SVA he was OK to do this. Again, maybe if I was a copyright lawyer I'd see it differently, but from what I understand, most of them agree with Rowling.
Now, whether the law is right or not is a totally different topic ;)