Can companies copyright movie characters / names / images etc?

[scm5436]

I'm starting a business selling items from a popular movie franchise, and am wondering how "protected" the names, images, characters from the show might be.

Let's say I'm talking about Star Trek.

Could I for example use an image of the Starship Enterprise in my logo (assuming it is a unique image created by a graphic designer, not a copyrighted image taken from another source)?

Likewise can they copyright names of people, planets, races etc? So could I call my business "Spock's Shop" or the "Klingon Emporium" for example?

 

[paulears]

You seem to be skating with danger on all levels here. The image of the enterprise belongs to Paramount who are experienced worldwide in their rights management. They're also quite good with not for profit things that enhance the brand, but heavy on anything that could damage it. If the image from your designers can clearly be seen to be what it is, then that's a rights issue. The name Start Trek is protected, and even things like character names and invented races are covered. Assuming the things you are selling are genuine rights cleared products that Paramount generate income from, you might find them receptive to additional sales - but you really need to ask them these questions and see what their view is. I assume you're not talking about Star Trek - but the same things apply - unless it's Disney, and they are ultra protective.

 

[Mr D]

To take advantage of their brand expect to have to pay them. Do it by mutual agreement up front and it should be cheaper than doing it for free then they find out about it.

 

[scm5436]

So what is it that allows them to protect their

If the image from your designers can clearly be seen to be what it is, then that's a rights issue. The name Start Trek is protected, and even things like character names and invented races are covered.

What is it specifically they are covered by? Is it copyright? If so is there a place I can go to see what is and is not "protected"?
The name I was planning to use was more of a throw away line in one of the movies, rather than a named character or race, but it is specific to that movie, and recognisable (by geekier types perhaps) as such.

So really what I'm asking is how far does this protection go (just specific characters, names, races, planets etc) or every line ever uttered in any of the movies?

So could I call a star trek shop "live long and prosper", or a monty python shop "he's not the messiah"?

Just to be clear the shop would be selling fully licenced products, purchased from the UK authorised distributor, for sale in the UK. And as the shop only sells their specific licenced products they, theoretically, shouldn't have a problem with me referencing something from the movie in the logo (As long as I'm not trying to make my store/logo look like them, or confuse customers into thinking they're buying direct or anything like that - which I'm not)

I understand the best way forward is talking to them directly, but I already asked a different question via the distributor and directly, and didn't hear back via either. Given their size (huge), location (US) I suspect they're just not that bothered about talking to some small UK based reseller they've never heard of.

 

[Graham Tyers]

is there a place I can go to see what is and is not "protected"?

Yeah, it's called "The Court".

 

[Mr D]

So what is it that allows them to protect their
What is it specifically they are covered by? Is it copyright? If so is there a place I can go to see what is and is not "protected"?
The name I was planning to use was more of a throw away line in one of the movies, rather than a named character or race, but it is specific to that movie, and recognisable (by geekier types perhaps) as such.

So really what I'm asking is how far does this protection go (just specific characters, names, races, planets etc) or every line ever uttered in any of the movies?

So could I call a star trek shop "live long and prosper", or a monty python shop "he's not the messiah"?

Just to be clear the shop would be selling fully licenced products, purchased from the UK authorised distributor, for sale in the UK. And as the shop only sells their specific licenced products they, theoretically, shouldn't have a problem with me referencing something from the movie in the logo (As long as I'm not trying to make my store/logo look like them, or confuse customers into thinking they're buying direct or anything like that - which I'm not)

I understand the best way forward is talking to them directly, but I already asked a different question via the distributor and directly, and didn't hear back via either. Given their size (huge), location (US) I suspect they're just not that bothered about talking to some small UK based reseller they've never heard of.

So don't deal with the UK warehouse, deal with the brand owners.
Its not whether they are bothered talking to some small UK based reseller, its that you need to talk to them.

 

[MBE2017]

I suspect they're just not that bothered about talking to some small UK based reseller they've never heard of.

Oh, they will be. End of the day it comes down to a simple question, can you afford to go to court?

I used to deal with Disney and getting anything agreed was a huge problem, just making a poster, certain characters could not be seen with others, others could not be seen in a certain way, the protection is immense, it is their brand at stake.

Unless you have written confirmation, take it as a no and they will sue you if they feel you are taking any liberties.

 

[The Byre]

I understand the best way forward is talking to them directly, but I already asked a different question via the distributor and directly, and didn't hear back via either. Given their size (huge), location (US) I suspect they're just not that bothered about talking to some small UK based reseller they've never heard of.

It does not work like that! You MUST deal with their UK agents or subsidiary, whichever applies.

If you just steam ahead, they will hit you with as much litigation as it takes to wipe you and your business from Planet Earth.

 

[obscure]

Yes you can.... if you pay the hundreds of thousands/millions of dollars for an official license.

If you don't pay for a license....

Could I for example use an image of the Starship Enterprise in my logo (assuming it is a unique image created by a graphic designer, not a copyrighted image taken from another source)?

No

Likewise can they copyright names of people, planets, races etc? So could I call my business "Spock's Shop" or the "Klingon Emporium" for example?

Yes they can so no you can't..... An unofficial Harry Potter themed cafe in Hong Kong was recently sued by Warner Brothers for trademark infringement and probably passing off https://coconuts.co/hongkong/food-d...otter-themed-cafe-for-trademark-infringement/

Books and films are protected by copyright. This includes many of the original elements such as races/characters. Hobbits (The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings) and Klingons (Star Trek) are original creations - unlike Elves or Goblins - and as such covered by copyright. In the case of big movie titles many of the elements (EG Starfleet logo) will also be protected as trademarks. In addition if you were to collect together a number of visual elements to theme your business (see the link above), the companies would claim that people would wrongly assume that it was officially licensed/associated with the owners of the work, and you would be sued for passing off.

Creating an original work (even a bad one) is hard. Making a successful one takes hard work/creativity and often a very substantial financial investment. Star Trek, Harry Potter, Dr Who, Star Wars etc are known by/popular with fans because of that hard work and investment. Taking someone else's hard work/investment (without permission/license) and using it to promote a business means benefiting financially from their work/investment without paying them. This is exactly what Copyright/Trademark/Passing off laws were created to prevent.

These franchises are worth billions. The owners make millions from licensing image and other associated rights to comic companies, toy companies, etc etc. If people could just rock up and start using these works, without paying, all those lucrative deals would disappear. There are teams of lawyers whose job it is to look for infringements. If your business has even a moderate level of success then people will start posting about it on social media and these lawyers will find you and sue you.

Is licensing viable?
Deals for these properties are expensive. You would be looking at upwards of 10K legal fees just to sort out the license - and the value of the license would be in the hundreds of thousands or millions. It simply isn't worthwhile for these companies to do small deals.

 

[WaveJumper]

Remember my marketing team spending months of work with a local theater trying to sort out posters for a town centre Christmas light switch on, we only wanted to use one Disney character's picture, don't ever think these things will be done 'over night' you can expect to jump through an awful lot of hoops and then still get turned down, good advice from above, and best of luck with your project

 

[ecommerce84]

My partner is a member of a business group on that Facebook thing.

There are daily posts from people selling on Etsy who make products based on Disney/Star Trek characters and have been on the receiving end of cease and desist letters and listings being shut down.

Most of them are businesses being run from a back bedroom or garage conversion in a 3 bed semi on a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of a small market town in a predominantly rural county. And yet still Disney finds them.

 

[scm5436]

Taking someone else's hard work/investment (without permission/license) and using it to promote a business means benefiting financially from their work/investment without paying them. This is exactly what Copyright/Trademark/Passing off laws were created to prevent.

ok, but that's clearly not what I'm doing at all. I'm selling their licenced products, exclusively, so am making money for them and taking a small percentage for my efforts. In return all I want is to use a store name that reflects the brand rather than just something random.

As it is I think I'll just stick with text for the logo, and hope the name is obscure enough not to warrant any attention.

But as advised I will again attempt to make contact with someone appropriate, although it the products are licenced by a 3rd party company from the brand owner, so getting all the way up the chain to the brand owner may be difficult.

 

[Mr D]

ok, but that's clearly not what I'm doing at all. I'm selling their licenced products, exclusively, so am making money for them and taking a small percentage for my efforts. In return all I want is to use a store name that reflects the brand rather than just something random.

As it is I think I'll just stick with text for the logo, and hope the name is obscure enough not to warrant any attention.

But as advised I will again attempt to make contact with someone appropriate, although it the products are licenced by a 3rd party company from the brand owner, so getting all the way up the chain to the brand owner may be difficult.

Yes you are selling their licenced products so making money for you.
The amount you make is up to you - small percentage or big percentage.
I've sold thousands of licensed items, without paying for a licence separately and with making a decent percentage of the sale price for my efforts.

They already made their money when they sold someone else the licence to produce the goods.
Unless there is an agreement such that you send £x per item sold to the brand owning company for each item sold then you aren't paying them anything.

They are making nothing at all from you.

What you appear to want is a store name that utilises the brand they have spent money promoting. Great - they can certainly agree to that.
For a suitable fee.

Or you can simply do it as you want and cough up the much bigger amount they are likely to go after for unauthorised use of their brand while being required to change your name anyway.

Now which do you want to do?

 

[The Byre]

As it is I think I'll just stick with text for the logo, and hope the name is obscure enough not to warrant any attention.

It doesn't work like that!

If you were to use the title 'Live Long and Prosper!' and Paramount and/or their UK agents do nothing, that phrase passes into the public domain. For that reason, they are FORCED to go after each and every unauthorised use of their IP.

That is why they will and must go after you with all guns blazing. It's not because they are nasty people or because they want to see you suffer, but because allowing you to abuse their IP sets a precedent and their IP can degenerate into worthlessness.

 

[scm5436]

What you appear to want is a store name that utilises the brand they have spent money promoting. Great - they can certainly agree to that.
For a suitable fee.

ok, fair enough, although whether I'm "utilising their brand" is debatable - it was a single phrase uttered once by on of the characters in one of the episodes - hence my original question as to how far the protection goes (ie. is it just names etc, or every word that was ever uttered?)

I mean if you take BattleStar Galactica - they used the word Frak as an equivalent to our F word, so they could swear a lot in the show without actually swearing. So if I had a store that sold exclusively BSG stuff and I called it "Frak It!" would that be "utilising their brand"? Or just making a reference to a made up word used in the show, that fans would understand?

But, in my case, as the phrase isn't in general usage, and was uttered in an episode, and would reasonably be linked to the show by anyone that remembered it I'll assume it is protected.

So, without knowing the specific brand, does anyone have any ideas generally speaking on the kind of licencing costs I'd likely be looking at? I mean are we talking 5 figure minimum?

Personally, I would think that as they're such a massive company with a lot of brands they'd probably not really be that interested in tiny companies wanting to licence images for t-shirts, or give their website a name with a tenuous link to their brand, so they'd just make the minimum licence fee so far out of our range that it wouldn't be realistic.

Or do these large companies look to deal with businesses of all sizes and price accordingly?

Either way, it sounds like the best solution is just to come up with some totally random name and save all the bother...

 

[MBE2017]

No idea on costs, if you were looking to sell legit licensed goods from them they might give you permission for a token payment or even free if they felt it wouldn’t harm their brand. Only the company concerned can help you on that.

 

[paulears]

Nowadays the big firms like Getty Images and Disney use the internet and automatically look for their protected works and trademarks. Auto systems that search and search, and all it takes is a positive comment on Facebook with your shop's name mentioned to appear on a list.

Clearly there is a risk. Only you can decide if it's worth it. Things like 'Frak' is a good example. It's probably so well known now because of BSG, but wasn't created by then - it had already been in use and the programme decided to use it. It does seem that first step is the usual cease and desist letter. Trouble is, by then you're committed. I suppose you could search their websites for examples of the words and if you find them, clearly they got there first. Best of luck.

 

[scm5436]

Are there any legal people on this forum that specialise in IP? That in return for a fee could look at my specific example (and a few other suggestions) and give me a legal opinion on whether "that's going to get you in trouble", "that's debateable", or "that's so far removed from the brand that you should be fine the way you are using it"

 

[fisicx]

You don't need a legal anyone.

If you plan on using a word or phrase that is immediately recognizable as belonging to a film/book/tv show then you will need permission from the copyright owner.

 

[MBE2017]

Are there any legal people on this forum that specialise in IP? That in return for a fee could look at my specific example (and a few other suggestions) and give me a legal opinion on whether "that's going to get you in trouble", "that's debateable", or "that's so far removed from the brand that you should be fine the way you are using it"

What matters is whether the company feels you have infringed their IP, only a court can decide for sure, you would need very deep pockets, the companies concerned do for sure.

I think your answer lies in the question, the very fact you are worried of there being a potential claim means it is risky IMO.

 

[Mr D]

What matters is whether the company feels you have infringed their IP, only a court can decide for sure, you would need very deep pockets, the companies concerned do for sure.

I think your answer lies in the question, the very fact you are worried of there being a potential claim means it is risky IMO.

It sounds like the OP is determined to go ahead with a risky move regardless of anything anyone else says. Or else would have already dropped the matter in favour of a safe name.

 

[scm5436]

You don't need a legal anyone.

If you plan on using a word or phrase that is immediately recognizable as belonging to a film/book/tv show then you will need permission from the copyright owner.

ok, but it's not "immediately recognisable". It seems quite a lot of fans don't even get it. Like I said, it was one line in one episode.

 

[scm5436]

It sounds like the OP is determined to go ahead with a risky move regardless of anything anyone else says. Or else would have already dropped the matter in favour of a safe name.

To be clear, I went ahead with this 6 months ago, and the website is in google search results, google ads, google shopping, and social media. I chose the name because it was a fun name and I thought it obscure enough not to be an issue. I brought it up now because I was going to get a proper logo done, and wanted to know what would be acceptable in terms of images, if anything.

But after the responses in this post I am now concerned about the name itself and am seriously considering renaming the website (I would do it today if I could think of a decent name for a shop that sells nothing but [x], but without mentioning/referencing/or apparently in any way alluding to [x] in the name of the shop). So therefore, before I go through all that hassle of renaming, I'll ask again - are there any IP experts here that could give me a legal opinion on my specific case?

 

[NickGrogan]

Unless they are going to indemnify you for all potential costs as part of their legal opinion, when someone telling it will be fine isn't going to help you.

And no one is going to indemnify against claims by Disney/Marvel/Etc.

So spending a few hundred pounds is not going to help you. If Disney comes after you then what are you going to do with the "legal opinion" that you've got?

 

[The Byre]

To be clear, I went ahead with this 6 months ago, and the website is in google search results, google ads, google shopping, and social media. I chose the name because it was a fun name and I thought it obscure enough not to be an issue.

I have to deal with copyright issues all the time and it is always about the detail. EVERYTHING here hangs on one issue - just how obscure is this phrase? Just how obscure is obscure and has anybody used that phrase before it was used in the programme?

Let me tell you a story about 'obscure' -

There is a band called Nine Inch Nails (founded by Trent Reznor and NIИ to its fans) and for a long time, it was just an underground insider tip in the NY music scene in the late 80s. In one of their earlier songs (long before their World-wide hit 'Closer') they used a small sample from a PBS documentary about the streets of NY. All that sample was, was a guy flipping open his Zippo lighter, lighting his cigarette and saying "They'll get you in the end anyway!" through his teeth.

The sound engineer had found it on some tape he had made years earlier and that bit was just right for that song. He had only taped that part, he failed to tape top or tail, so no credits or title.

The producer tried to find the rights owner of that PBS film, but failed. "Hey - what the hell! Who's to know - I mean, it's just such an obscure film, so nobody will be any the wiser!" so they went ahead and used it on a limited release for Germany only. "We're doing just one thousand copies for the German tour, so nobody here will notice!"

Fast forward a few years and the director/producer of that forgotten PBS documentary had become a lecturer on film and media at some community college (we all gotta eat!) One of his students was a big NIИ fan and managed to get a rare copy of that CD sent over from Germany and used that track with that sample as his temporary music track in his student project film.

The lecturer recognised the sound of his film straight away!

Long story short - about $12,000. $7k for the sample and the rest in legal fees.

That was the very last time anybody in that team ever used an uncleared sample!

 

[scm5436]

ok, ok, looking at new names...

 

[obscure]

ok, but that's clearly not what I'm doing at all.

Except that it clearly is what you are doing. You have taken a recognisable phrase from a copyright work and are using it as your company name. Names are used to identify (promote) a business. You are using someone else's Intellectual Property to benefit financially, without their permission.

I'm selling their licenced products, exclusively, so am making money for them and taking a small percentage for my efforts. In return all I want is to use a store name that reflects the brand rather than just something random.

But it's not your brand. The law states that the copyright/trademark owner has exclusive rights to decide how their IP is used.

Just because you sell their product that doesn't give you rights over their property/business. What you get in return is profit. (How large or small that is is entirely down to you).