Subject:
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Re: The Lego Group will attempt to stop some "brickfilms"
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.animation
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Date:
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Mon, 24 Dec 2001 01:31:27 GMT
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Viewed:
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3669 times
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In lugnet.mediawatch, Jason Rowoldt writes:
> Hello folks,
>
> Some of you may know me, others may not. I'm Jason Rowoldt, the founder and
> webmaster of the site www.brickfilms.com.
Hi Jason! :) Long time no talk!
> The thing we want to avoid is legal troubles with / pissing off TLC for
> using their trademark or confusing people as to who made the film. The
> simple way to do that is to follow a few rules. Take note:
>
> 1) Do not ever, ever title your movie "LEGO" anything. Such as LEGO wars,
> "2001" A LEGO Odyssey", or "LEGO Ninja Attackers from Hell". Right there you
> violate their trademark.
Hmm, I personally don't think it's as clear as all that. Trademarks are
tricky things. The primary issue is not to call something that you made
"Lego". The secondary issue to not to give the impression that something you
made was made or endorsed by The LEGO Group. BUT: If I make a movie about,
say, the anti-trust case against Microsoft, it's going to be hard to avoid
the trademarked word "Microsoft". It's going to appear in the movie in some
form or another. And what if I want to call the movie "Microsoft vs The
Justice Department", does that violate Microsoft's trademark? If so,
documentary filmmakers are going to have a hard time...
I bring this example up because I see my movie "2001: A LEGO Odyssey" as a
commentary on the development of LEGO over the last 30 years. I happen to
use the themes and visual imagery used in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey",
but really, this movie is *about* Lego. So the question is this: Can a movie
about Lego use the word Lego in it?
> 2) Take pains to not have the word LEGO in your film. Again, simply for
> trademark issues. A block is a block. a LEGO block is a LEGO block.
Again, there are shades of gray here. Does it violate trademarks to have
your characters *talk* about Lego? I remember a Simpsons episode where Bart
mentions the word Lego (the one where they all go to Blockoland). What's
with that?
> 3) Try not to use images created by LEGO, such as official models used by
> them. They take pictures of all their completed models in order to put them
> on boxes, promote them, etc. If you use these official models you blur the
> line between what they own the rights to for the images and what you do.
> Besides, I'm sure you can come up with cooler models than they do, even if
> you change it a tiny bit. Same thing with characters used by them, such as
> "Ogel" from the recent Alpha Squad.
Copyright laws are a little clearer than trademark laws (to me :), so no
disagreement here... I'm not a lawyer (although I do live with one), but I
did want to share my feelings on the matter. It's safe to say that if I were
to make "2001: A LEGO Odyssey" over again I'd put a big fat disclaimer in it
somewhere....
Happy Holidays!
-- Marc
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