Tolkien Estate Says Just Mentioning Tolkien Infringes; Tolkien Censorwear Appears In Response

from the that's-not-how-this-works dept

We've been mentioning a bit about how the estate of JRR Tolkien has been overaggressive in trying to enforce (sometimes non-existent) intellectual property rights related to Tolkien. The estate has been like that for a while, but in the last few weeks it's seemed like the number of such stories have been ramping up. The latest one is particularly ridiculous. Boing Boing points us to the news that the Tolkien Estate has threatened a guy for having a button that merely mentions Tolkien: If you can't see the image, the button reads: "While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion." That's not infringing in any way, shape or form. Yet, the Tolkien Estate sent Zazzle (where the button was being sold) a cease and desist. Ridiculously, Zazzle simply complied. That's disappointing as well. In cases of obvious overreach, Zazzle should stand up for the rights of its users.

Of course, where Zazzle fails to stand up for its users, its users seem to be more than willing to stand up for themselves. A bunch of protest merchandise has suddenly been showing up on Zazzle, such as the following two shirts, which joke about Christopher Tolkien's desire to censor any mention of his father that he hasn't approved or been paid for:

Filed Under: christopher tolkien, infringement, jrr tolkien, tolkien
Companies: zazzle

Zazzle Sued Because Twilight Fans Like Making Their Own Merchandise

from the safe-harbors-anyone? dept

It looks like "print-on-demand/create your own t-shirt/mug/mouse pad store" company Zazzle has been sued for infringement by Summit Entertainment, who owns the licensing rights to the oh-so-popular Twilight movies. Apparently, all those excited tweens have been making their own Twilight merchandise. Now, basic common sense would tell you that Zazzle is the tool provider, and not the actual infringer here. But, Summit is claiming trademark violations, and (tragically and inexplicably) the official safe harbors cover things like copyright and defamation, but not trademark (hurray for legal loopholes). The only ones doing the actual infringement are the users, not Zazzle itself, but Zazzle has to hope that a court actually realizes this, and sometimes the courts get very, very confused on these sorts of things.

Filed Under: liability, third party, twilight
Companies: zazzle

Another Bogus Copyright Takedown: Can't Protest A Viacom Movie With T-Shirts

from the where's-the-infringement? dept

Boing Boing points us to the news that someone who was trying to protest the fact that a new Viacom animated movie was hiring Caucasian actors to play Asian or Inuit characters found that the t-shirts she was selling via Zazzle were taken down due to a claim that they violated Viacom's intellectual property. It's difficult to see what the violation of intellectual property here is. The shirts don't use any imagery from the movie itself. The t-shirts were designed by the woman herself. The only thing they have is a mention of the name of the movie -- but that shouldn't be enough to force the content offline. On top of that, plenty of the shirts don't seem to name the movie at all, but do name one of the characters. Again, it's quite difficult to see how this is an intellectual property violation, in any way. The explanation that Zazzle gave isn't entirely clear -- as it might not be a case of Viacom complaining directly, but Zazzle taking the matter into its own hands (which is equally troubling). Whether it's Viacom or Zazzle, this appears to be an overly aggressive attempt to stop perfectly reasonable public speech by hiding behind intellectual property claims. Update: Someone from Viacom stopped by in the comments to let us know that it has no problem with the shirts. Zazzle just took the shirts down on their own, and Viacom has asked them to put the shirts back up. Nice to see Viacom respond in this manner.

Filed Under: copyright, movies, protests, t-shirts, takedowns
Companies: viacom, zazzle