Forget The Stormtrooper Costumes, Get Worried About UK Courts Saying They Can Judge US Copyright Law

from the the-dark-side dept

We've covered the legal battle between Andrew Ainsworth and George Lucas for a few years now. If you don't recall, Ainsworth apparently designed the original stormtrooper costumes for Star Wars. He then tried to sell replicas that he made, but Lucas claimed copyright over the outfits. Ainsworth had been consistently winning, and that continued right up to the Supreme Court. The court has ruled in favor of Ainsworth, but the reasoning is a bit convoluted. First, the court still says that he violated US copyright laws -- which we'll discuss below. In this case, that really hasn't been an issue, because earlier courts had ruled the same thing. However, it was deemed meaningless since he didn't have sales in the US (and now refuses to sell to the US). As for the UK, the court said that as a costume, it gets a 15-year copyright (from the date it was marketed), meaning the copyright has now expired. I was unaware that the UK had special 15-year copyrights for certain items.

While most folks are focusing on the fact that Ainsworth "won," the whole part about the UK Supreme Court feeling qualified to judge whether or not something is infringing in the US may turn out to be the bigger story:

The decision is important for business because it clears up a long-running controversy over whether U.K. courts can decide if non-U.K. copyrights have been infringed, said Nigel Jones, a lawyer at Linklaters LLP in London.

“That uncertainty has now gone,” Jones said. “If you want to sue here, that is good news. If you want to avoid being sued here, it may be less welcome.”

Yes, get ready for copyright tourism lawsuits to go with libel tourism in the UK. In fact, others are now predicting "a flood of copyright lawsuits" are about to be filed in the UK. I'm still at a loss as to why the UK feels that it has any jurisdiction whatsoever concerning copyrights outside of its borders, but I fear that we're going to see a lot of unfortunate lawsuits because of this.

Filed Under: copyright, jurisdiction, stormtroopers, uk