Copyright infringement can happen in all forms of media,
including film. The movie, The Hangover Part II has been subject to claims of
copyright infringement. In this movie, Ed Helms plays a character who has a
tribal tattoo around his left eye. This tattoo is the exact same design as the
one on the boxing champion, Mike Tyson. Tyson’s tattoo artist S. Victor
Whitmill had obtained a copyright for the “artwork on 3-D”. Whitmill filled a
lawsuit against Warner Bros Entertainment just weeks before the movie was
released in theaters. He said that Warner Bros had committed copyright
infringement by using his design in their movie and in advertisements without
his consent. Before there was any sort of ruling on this matter, both parties
came to an agreement out of court that resolved this problem.
Images are not the only things that can be protected by
copyright law. In 1985, Lucasfilm filed a lawsuit against High Frontier and the
Committee for a Strong, Peaceful America. In the middle of the 1980’s
politicians nicknamed the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defensive
Initiative, the “Star Wars” program. George Lucas didn’t want his film to be,
in any way, associated with this government program. This program wanted to put
anti-missile weapons in space. Lucasfilm had a trademark for “Star Wars” but
they were not successful in winning the court’s decision. The court decided
that these interest groups could use the term as long as they didn’t use it to
sell any product or service.
Adidas has been using the three-stripe marking on their
shoes and other products since 1952. Adidas filed a lawsuit against Payless
Shoesource, claiming that they had broken the law by trademark infringement. Payless
was selling shoes with similar logos of two and four stripes that looked like
the Adidas logo. Adidas got a jury trial that took seven years to reach a
verdict. During this time, 268 of Payless shoes were reviewed because of
similar, Adidas style logos. Adidas won the case and was awarded $305,000,000. Its
fairly easy to see that copyright infringement can be very costly and never a good idea to try and steal
someone else’s intellectual property.
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