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I think people are missing a few key points in this discussion.
Consider your average movie or television show... some of the comments
made in this thread have suggested that you can't use a company's
product in a movie without express permission. Just try to imagine the
logistics of it if this were true: every time a scene is shot
production companies would have to get written permission for every
pair of jeans or shoes worn, the coffee cup actor A threw at actor B
(hey - there's a malicious use of someone's design), the furniture the
actors are using, etc., etc., etc.
There's no such thing as a generic anything. Everything you see in
movies or elsewhere was designed and built by somebody, somewhere,
working for some company. You can't possibly get permission from all
of them. While I acknowledge that there are situations where a company
can step in and stop a product from being used in a production, it
seems to me that the onus is on the company to prove that the product
is being used in a way that could damage the company's or product's
reputation. You have to go a fairly long way to prove this.
As for the issue of premission being required if a product is
recognizable, consider the case of your average car chase. Automobile
manufactures spend considerable sums of money to develop and promote
their vehicles as safe reliable transportation. Yet in any given car
chase, you have vehicles being driven in an unsafe, reckless manner,
endangering the general public. Given that pretty well all of us can
pick out a Honda, Ford or GM product from a block away, the producers
don't have to zoom in on the manufacturer's logo for you to know who
makes the vehicle. If you are producing such a scene, you certainly
aren't presenting the vehicle manufacturer's product in the best light
(ie. Chrysler - the vehicle of choice for drug dealers and mafia types
- at least that's how it can appear in the movie) but there's nothing
the manufacturer can do about it. On the other hand, if the actors are
maligning the product ("...Honda bikes are a bunch of crap...") and
the statement can't be interpreted any other way given it's context
(ie. the speaker isn't a long-time Harley-Davidson collector) then the
vehicle manufacturer could take action. If however the speaker is a
Harley-Davidson collector then comment about Hondas simply helps to
establish the mindset of the character and you can't censor it.
I would argue that the same applies to the Lego brick, including
minifigs. Like my Ford taurus wagon, it may be very recognizable as
the product of a particular company, but if I want to use it in a
movie, I don't need Ford's permission. Now if the makers of a Lego
film are implying that Lego bricks give off some kind of poisonous gas
(and it seems to me they do (1) - but I digress) then Lego might take
issue with that particular point. As a result they would be within
their right to demand that the reference be removed from the movie,
but you still couldn't forbid the producers from using the bricks
otherwise.
Matthias Jetleb
VA3-MWJ
(1) An odd but interesting point on the subject of a phenomenon known
as out-gassing: On the Discovery Channel some time ago, there was a
program dealing with what NASA has to go through to qualify items for
space flight. It turns out that most materials decompose gradually,
giving off various gasses (the process of out-gassing), many of which
are toxic in large quantities. This is completely unnoticable on Earth
since the atmosphere absorbs the gas and dissipates it. In a very
small, closed environment, such as a spacecraft, where a very limited
quantity of atmosphere is constantly recirculated the levels of gas
build up toxic levels over a period of days or weeks. Short duration
missions aren't really affected by it, but longer ones (Skylab, Mir,
ISS) can see gas levels build up to unhealth levels. Carbon dioxide is
removed by filters, but there are so many different types of molecules
given off by different plastics and rubber compounds, etc, that it
isn't possible to build filters to remove each one. This, it turns out
is one of the main reasons why tools used in space are so rediculously
expensive. NASA can't just buy them at the local hardware store - they
have to be tested for both reliability (obviously) and out-gassing. It
turns out that there aren't a whole lot of modern materials that don't
exhibit this property. I would infer from this that we aren't going to
be seeing Lego in space for a while....
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Offtopic .. outgassing
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| In lugnet.publish.cinema, Matthias Jetleb writes: You know, I have noticed this. Scratch a LEGO and you can definately smell a strange odor coming from it, a very unpleasant odor. I bet as they slowly, slowy decompose that give off fumes. But since (...) (23 years ago, 29-Mar-01, to lugnet.animation)
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