Motion Picture Academy Threatens Costume Shop For Offering An Oscar Costume
from the trademark-fun dept
The Motion Picture Academy is notorious not just for its incredibly aggressive stance when it comes to copyright, but also to trademarks -- especially when it comes to the Academy Awards, better known as The Oscars. I've heard stories of them threatening/suing people for holding Oscars parties with mock Oscar statues. So it comes as little surprise to see the following story, sent in by Lawrence D'Oliveiro, that the Academy is threatening a small costume shop in New Zealand for daring to offer costumes that look like the Oscar statue. As if they don't have anything better to be focusing on? The Academy and misguided trademark lawyers will of course chime in and insist that they must do this or risk the statue becoming "generic" such that the trademark goes away, but it still seems like a bullying approach. Why not just work with the shop to offer a "licensed" version? It's not like having such costumes around the world causes any actual harm to The Oscars. In fact, it helps to promote them...
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: (Lawyer Costume)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: (Lawyer Costume)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Trademark vs Copyright
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
#36521
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Prejudice, homophobia all play a part in who wins/loses, and you can pretty much BUY yourself any of the major awards just by accidentally "donating" the most that year to which ever corporation owns the award body rendering the film and music awards utterly pointless except as a self-congratulatory pat on the back.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Motion Picture Academy?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]