Universal's legal action against 11th Hour

POSTED BY: CABridges
UPDATED: Monday, November 13, 2006 09:47
VIEWED: 59280
PAGE 2 of 17

WOW! This is pretty aggressive.. and it does raise the question about guerilla marketing etc.

I might suggest that if you have favorite fan vids... you might want to save them too... before the hammer hits on those creative types as well...

I get the idea that one should not make money off another's IP.. (blah blah blah) but this SEEMS to go beyond that.. to no marketing etc.

I too wonder what this all means.. I have no idea.

As to legal advice.. try the law clinic at a local Law School, they may be able to provide some pro bono legal advice/assistance

Chindi

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

The question for me is why now? Two possibilities come to mind:

1) The bods at Universal got startled by all the 'Versary letters they received, many of which commented on how Browncoats are willing to spend money on merchandise, and they wondered if they were missing out on easy money...

or

2) A lisence holder threatened Universal with legal action for not protecting the exclusivity of the lisence they had sold to him/her... resulting in a bunch of rushed, worried and consequently threatening emails and letters from the Universal Legal Dept...

I'd agree with CABridges that there is a good chance that if the latter scenario is accurate, the suits at the top who know what the movie was, and and how important the fanbase was and is, don't know what's going on. The tone of the letter sent to 11th Hour has a feeling of urgency and, almost, fear about it - perhaps due to a concern that they need to be seen to be doing something now and fast - otherwise why don't they go down the cheaper and simpler route of straightforward C&D letters?

Not a whole lot of common-sense flying around Universal at the moment I reckon... My heart goes out to those staunch Browncoats who have worked hard, profited little, and are thanked not at all by the boys who get the major cashy cash.

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

good point made by Kane 1 over on the OB...

Quote:

---

Hang on - you've rec'd an E-MAIL demand for retrospective fees .... what legal body makes demands by e-mail? Treat it as a scam claim to extort money and report it to the Police and if you feel like it Universal but make the police your first stop (may be an FBI report would be appropriate in the US)

---

...does make you wonder.

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

That is true..I would have expected it as a letter, not an email...

hmmm


Chindi

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Glad someone spotted that - thought it had gotten lost in the replys so I headed over here to post as well - if someone could post it on whedonesque as well it'd help get the message across to 11th Hour - and if it is Universal then maybe we should start pointing our comments at them in our special Browncoat manner.

Arbas/Kane/Kane_1 and all sorts of variations on the Kane theme :)

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

good point made by Kane 1 over on the OB...

Quote:

---

Quote:

Hang on - you've rec'd an E-MAIL demand for retrospective fees .... what legal body makes demands by e-mail? Treat it as a scam claim to extort money and report it to the Police and if you feel like it Universal but make the police your first stop (may be an FBI report would be appropriate in the US)

---

...does make you wonder.

---

Yeah, the wording in the excerpt 11thHour provided seemed a little odd (specifically the sentence refering to the 'valuable' copyrights). Not to mention that the 72 hour demand sounds like a ransom demand...

Does anyone know the legality of using email to threaten this kind of action? Email can be easily ignored - isn't that why papers are served in person (and not through the mail system?)

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by MrT:
good point made by Kane 1 over on the OB...

Quote:

---

Hang on - you've rec'd an E-MAIL demand for retrospective fees .... what legal body makes demands by e-mail? Treat it as a scam claim to extort money and report it to the Police and if you feel like it Universal but make the police your first stop (may be an FBI report would be appropriate in the US)

---

...does make you wonder.

---

Yes. If it it legit' there should be a postal address AND telephone number which can be used to verify its authenticity. I would suggest making sure this is all above board before leaping to any other sort of action.

When I think of an interesting signature you'll be the first to know.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

here is an idea, it might be pretty thin, but here it goes.

maybe universal is going to make their own shirts and stuff and dont want it confused with 11th hr??

like i said it is thin, but who knows?? they all ready have mal's gun in the works and the replica money? maybe tshirts are next???

universals "offical" mechendise money might help them rally up for a sequal with the big wigs??

thin i know

Keep Flying!!

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

I am excessively shocked about this...
just as Andy Warhol had a right to create original artwork based on the Campbell soup logo,
so 11th Hour has a right to make and even sell her original art work, which you will notice carefully avoids any use of logo or trademarked images.

a friend- who IS a lawyer of contractual law, but who does not practice in court - at lj (who I think would not want hundreds of people arriving at her lj) wrote the following piece on a similar topic several months ago:

Quote:

---

Intellectual Property Law and the Fan - A Primer
[I originally posted a short version of this as a response to [someone at lj] lengthy analysis of a recent Harry Potter fanfic scandal regarding plagrism. For a deeper understanding of that scandal or plagirism go to that post. This one is about how fanfic, icons, vids, screen shot fall under copyright law and the extent to which, if any, they are considered copyright infringement. I updated it to include the Tasini court case, which I can't believe I forgot - it's at the end of the history section. Please note, I altered the section on Real Person Fanfic after doing a bit more research. You actually have less leeway here as opposed to more - due to libel and defamation laws - which do come into play here. Also note that my understanding of libel and defamation laws is fairly simplistic.]

Fandom and Intellectual Property Law…

Fanfic is a foggy area copyright wise, but then so is intellectual property law. People do not agree and US Copyright Law has been changed several times – there’s the 1976 Act, the amended act of 1978, and again in 1988 with the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act in 1998 (or Mickey Mouse Protection Act)( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act, the World Copyright Act), The WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996, The European Copyright Directive and finally the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, – which was the most controversial and went through multiple drafts before being signed by the President on October 28,1998.


A Little Bit of History

I remember back in 1996-2000, being on two list-serves, one went to a combo of Archivist and Library Association members around the Globe, but was mostly US based, and one an Intellectual Property Lawyer's list serve - regarding the legalities relating to different types of derivative works.

This was when the internet was just beginning to take off, before live journal existed or we had such things as blogs. Discussion boards were rudimentary and IM Messaging non-existent. The legal minds on the list-serves were worried that the internet would make it easier for people to steal or swipe intellectual property, cut and past links and content, manipulate images, and it would be impossible to track, police or govern. The Internet felt like an the perfect device for intellectual property theft. They were so worried that they kept trying to pass World Copyright Acts regarding the internet and finally managed to get some language into the European Copyright Directive and the US version - Digital Millennium Copyright Act – these were implementations of laws from the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty of 1996. The Sonny Bono Copyright Extension is the other law that US put into place to implement the WIPO Copyright Treaty. Doing so, made it possible for the countries who had implemented the treaty to respect US Copyright Law and vice versa. I think I saw four or five versions of the Treaty, the Directive, and the Millennium Act before they were signed into law. And they were not agreed to by all the nations – this is important. (I may be wrong, but I think Germany may have been one of the hold-outs along with, of course, Asia, which posed obvious issues regarding international law.) The test was – where is the ISP address originating from and is the content being distributed on the site originating from that country or did the content originate in another country protected under the World Act and was

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME