COPYRIGHT & IMAGE RIGHTS
Copyright permeates all aspects of television production, providing
copyright owners with certain exclusive rights to do specific acts in
connection with the copyright works that they own. Copyright protects
people’s and companies’ creative endeavours so they can benefit and
profit from their work. A television company making a programme
for broadcast will own copyright in the film it is producing. Copyright
enables the owners to earn money by licensing rights in the programme
to others who wish to exploit it. At the same time, producers need to
ensure that rights in copyright works included within programmes –
so-called ‘underlying rights’, in music, archive, photographs etc – are
properly licensed from whoever owns them, unless they can rely on
one of the statutory defences to copyright infringement, such as fair
dealing. Infringing others’ copyright is likely to result in you being sued
for damages and may mean that your programme can’t be shown. An
understanding of copyright is therefore essential for those working
in television production. In this section of zoom-in we round up some
recent copyright news in the world of media and entertainment.
Ed Sheeran hits back in
copyright claim
n Lawyers for the singer Ed Sheeran
have filed two motions to dismiss a
copyright case brought against him by
the writers of X Factor winner Matt
Cardle’s song Amazing. We reported on
the lawsuit in the Autumn edition of
zoom-in. Now Sheeran’s lawyers have
hit back, asking the US court to dismiss the claim on two grounds. First,
they say that the claim breaches ‘pleading rules’ (rules about how a party to
litigation should set out its case to the
court), as it is excessively long and prolix, including paragraphs which last for
several pages, and which do not make
clear which allegations are being made
against which of the 11 defendants being sued. Responding in any meaningful way to such a claim is impossible,
according to the motion.
Second, Sheeran, his co-writer Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol, and the
other UK-based defendants are seeking
to have the case against them dismissed
on the grounds that the California court
has no jurisdiction over them. They say
they did not write the song in California and have never exploited the song
in California; rather, third-party US
companies have done so. A California
court will now decide whether the case
should continue.
Lucasfilm sues Lightsaber
academy
HITTING BACK: ED SHEERAN
24 | zoom-in Winter 2016
n Disney subsidiary Lucasfilm is suing the owner of a series of Jedi schools,
including the Lightsaber Academy,
for trademark infringement. Michael
Brown, also known as Flynn Michael,
runs classes in New York and Florida
teaching techniques from the Star Wars
films, including training in using a
lightsaber. Lucasfilm says Brown’s businesses have used a series of their trademarks without permission, including a
logo that is said to be nearly identical
to the Jedi Order logo. ‘Jedi’ and ‘lightsaber’ are themselves trademarks of the
company. The lawsuit states that Brown
also sells products using elements of
their logos without authorisation. Lucasfilm says it has served a number of
notices asking Brown to stop using
their trademarks, and that Brown has
recently filed an application to trademark ‘Lightsaber Academy, Inc’.
Warner Bros attacks itself
n In an embarrassing error, Warner
Brothers reported some of its own websites for copyright infringement. Vobile,
a company which submits a large number of take-down requests on behalf of
Warner Brothers each month, made the
request to Google. The requests related
to links to official websites, including
for the films The Matrix and The Dark
Knight, and legitimate websites such as
Amazon, Sky and IMDb. It is understood that none of the links in question
were removed by Google.
Playboy – copyright in the
digital age
n In the Summer issue of zoom-in,
we reported on an ongoing copyright
case involving the publisher of Dutch
Playboy. Playboy took action against a
website called GeenStijl, which had
posted links to a website where free
Playboy images of Dutch TV presenter
Britt Dekker could be found.
The Dutch courts referred the case
to the Court of Justice of the European Union. This summer the Advocate
General (a legal advisor to the court)
published his opinion on the matter,
as we reported. However, the Court is
not bound to follow his opinion, and
in a judgment in September it took a
different approach.
The Court acknowledged that it