Miramax Survives Copyright Dispute Over 'Pulp Fiction' Poster Initiated By Opportunistic Photographer

from the royale-with-cheese dept

The iconic film Pulp Fiction appears to be a hot topic of conversation lately. We recently discussed Miramax's laughable lawsuit against Quentin Tarantino over his plan to offer NFTs for certain unreleased and unused portions of the film's drafted scripts, alongside the director's audio commentary revealing his thought processes and "secrets" surrounding the screenplay. While that whole thing is currently making Miramax look very confused as to intellectual property laws, there was recently a lawsuit ruled in Miramax's favor over the film's most iconic poster.

You know the image. It's the one with Uma Thurman laying stomach-down on a bed, smoking a cigarette, surrounded by guns and paperback books. The photo for that poster was taken by Firooz Zahedi at his studio in 1994 and has since become one of the most iconic movie posters ever. In May of 2020, Zahedi sued Miramax for copyright infringement over the extensive use of the photo on merchandise, claiming he never authorized its use for those instances. Miramax claimed the work had been done as a work for hire, which makes all the sense in the world, except, well...

Miramax claimed that he took the picture as part of a work-for-hire agreement for "Pulp Fiction," but sometime in the last 27 years, the studio misplaced the signed documents that made the agreement official, so it couldn't dig up anything to prove that.

Now, the whole "Sorry, the dog ate my work for hire paperwork" excuse typically doesn't fly well in court proceedings, no matter how much logical sense such an arrangement might make. In this case, however, I mentioned that the court found in favor of Miramax. How did that happen?

Well, it came down to the timing of Zahedi's suit coupled with the delay in filing it despite having documented knowledge of its wide use and distribution. And that documentation came in the form of an Instagram post.

Six years ago, Zahedi's stepson posted an Instagram photo of him with the action figure. The caption on that post read, "Happy Birthday to my Stepdad @fitzphoto [emojis] Turns out he didn't get toy royalties for his famous photo of Uma TM... But at least he has the toy now..."

Zahedi replied to the post, "Thanks... Sometimes it's best to settle for the little things in life."

In other words, there's a record in 2015 that shows Zahedi knew Miramax had repudiated his ownership at least that far back. The three-year statue of limitations for that ended in 2018, so as far as the judge was concerned, it was case closed.

And so the court indicated two things. First, the statute of limitations is 3 years from the time that Zahedi discovered the "unauthorized" use of his work, if we stipulate that this was in fact not work for hire. Second, that Instagram post demonstrates publicly that Zahedi had that knowledge in 2015. The suit was filed some 2 years late, therefore.

And so Miramax came out the winner. It may still be kind of crappy to not credit the photographer out of courtesy, but there is no legal liability here. And, frankly, I don't believe for a second that the studio didn't contract the movie photo as a work for hire arrangement, though it turns out that is not a factor in this ruling.

Filed Under: copyright, firooz zahedi, laches, pulp fiction, statute of limitations, uma thurman, work for hire
Companies: miramax

Miramax's Bizarrely Ridiculous Lawsuit Against Quentin Tarantino Over His Pulp Fiction NFTs

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

Miramax, the film studio originally founded by Harvey Weinstein before being sold to Disney, then spun out, and currently owned jointly by a Qatari media company, beIN, and ViacomCBS, is in the news for suing Quentin Tarantino over his collection of NFTs about Pulp Fiction -- one of Miramax's biggest hit films in the 90s, and the one that put Tarantino on the map. Like many other content creators, Tarantino is exploring the NFT space, and his experiment is actually somewhat interesting. It's using a modification of typical NFTs, where some (or all) of the content remains "access controlled" and only available to the purchaser. In other words: it's DRM'd NFTs, which seems to miss the entire point of NFTs, which is creating a new scarcity of ownership without the scarcity of content access. But, hey, it's Hollywood, so restricting access and using DRM is kind of in their DNA.

That said, the NFTs are supposedly handwritten bits of the original Pulp Fiction screenplay. From the page:

The NFT collection contains the handwritten, never-before-seen screenplay of Pulp Fiction, one of the most influencing artworks of modern film. Each NFT consists of a single iconic scene, including personalized audio commentary from Quentin Tarantino. The collector who will purchase one of these few and rare NFTs will get a hold of secrets from the screenplay and a glimpse into the mind and the creative process of Quentin Tarantino. The owner will enjoy the freedom of choosing between:

1. Keeping the secrets to himself for all eternity
2. Sharing the secrets with a few trusted loved ones
3. Sharing the secrets publicly with the world

Anyway, the complaint makes a bunch of claims that don't seem to be supportable. Specifically, it argues (1) breach of contract (2) copyright infringement (3) trademark infringement and (4) unfair competition. The breach of contract claim seems weak. Part of that dispute is that when he sold the movie to Miramax the contract did say that Tarantino reserved the rights to "screenplay publication" himself -- and Tarantino's lawyers contend that that's all this is. Miramax says that an NFT does not constitute publication -- which... is weird? Because it certainly seems like it should?

But the bigger issues are the copyright and trademark claims, which really don't seem to be based on an understanding of how NFTs work. Here's the basics of the copyright claim:

The finished motion picture Pulp Fiction and all elements thereof in all stages of development and production are all original works containing copyrightable subject matter for which copyright protection exists under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 101, et. seq. Except for Tarantino’s limited set of Reserved Rights, Miramax is the exclusive owner of rights under copyright in and to the motion picture Pulp Fiction, and all elements thereof in all stages of development and production. Miramax owns copyrights in and to Pulp Fiction (and, pursuant to the Original Rights Agreement and the Tarantino-Miramax Assignment, “all elements thereof in all stages of development and production”), including, without limitation, the registered United States copyrights thereto with U.S. Copyright Office registration numbers PA0000704507 and VA0001224051, and the copyrights assigned to Miramax in the Tarantino-Miramax Assignment and the B25 Instrument of Transfer, which are recorded with the U.S. Copyright Office as document numbers V2917P169 and V3005P270, respectively.

Through Defendants’ conduct alleged herein, including Defendants’ sale of rights relating to Pulp Fiction, and preparation and reproduction of derivative works based on Pulp Fiction without Miramax’s permission, Defendants have directly infringed Miramax’s exclusive rights in Pulp Fiction and the elements thereof in violation of Section 501 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 501.

But... no. That's not how this works. The NFT is just a database entry in a distributed ledger. It's not a "derivative work." There's no copyright-covered content in the NFT itself. The NFT will point to some content, but it seems ridiculous to argue that the content it points to is infringing either. It's going to be a scan of just a small part of the script that Tarantino wrote (and again, his contract explicitly says he can publish the script). So, what copyright is being infringed here? There is some new content -- the "secret" content -- as well, but from the descriptions, that's just Tarantino explaining something about the scenes in question. And he's allowed to do that.

So, I don't see what copyright could possibly be infringed here. Even if there were some way you could argue that a link to a scan of a few pages of a handwritten movie script somehow implicates the copyright in the movie (which it cannot), there's still an incredibly strong fair use argument (but, again, it shouldn't even get there).

Indeed, to highlight the lack of any copyright infringement here, law professor (and NFT conceptual artist) Brian Frye created (and then quickly sold) his own Secret Pulp Fiction NFT, noting that:

Ownership of this NFT constitutes ownership of certain secret and confidential thoughts I created about the movie Pulp Fiction (1994), which was directed by Quentin Tarantino. The owner of the NFT will have exclusive access to those thoughts, which they may use in any way they like.

Basically, anyone is allowed to sell their "secret" thoughts and ideas about the movie Pulp Fiction, including Quentin Tarantino, and it doesn't violate Miramax's rights.

As for the trademark claim, it too seems like a huge stretch. I looked up the trademark registration and it covers certain classes, including magnets, ornamental pins, calendars, posters, tote bags, wallets, cups and mugs, t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, fashion garments, jackets, blouses, pants, caps, hats, socks, ties, Halloween and masquerade costumes, costumes for children's use, action figures, bendable toys, jigsaw puzzles, puzzle games, collectible toy figures, rubber character toys, and a few more such things.

I don't see how a link in a distributed ledger database is covered by any of those. Nor do I see how a scan of a handwritten part of a script is any of those. That's not how trademark works. On top of that, where is there likely to be any confusion here? The sale is quite clearly coming from Tarantino, not Miramax, and despite the complaint saying that consumers will believe this whole thing is sponsored by Miramax, there's no reason to believe that's actually true.

All of this seems like typical Hollywood studio overreach, demanding ownership over things they don't have control over, just because they have lawyers who think they can get away with it.

Filed Under: breach of contract, copyright, derivative works, nfts, pulp fiction, quentin tarantino, trademark
Companies: miramax