[gamblor956]

Lawyers aren't expected to know the law outside of their specialty, but a law firm that doesn't understand basic trademark law is probably not a firm you want to trust with your legal matters, because it indicts a failure to perform even the most basic due diligence.

[klustregrif]

Lego already tried this approach and it doesn’t work. You cannot use trademark law to extend expired patents or copyrights.

The real ad here is them baiting Disney and running this fairly open and shut case. Of cause they can use public domain material in their commercial and Disney can’t prevent them.

[gamblor956]

Copyright only applies to specific expressions.

Mickey is still a trademark of the Disney corporation.

You're right though. This is an open and shut case that Morgan and Morgan will lose. There's only several decades of case law on this...

[joecool1029]

We're talking about parody though, there's case law suggesting it would be fine: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law...

[gamblor956]

No, the Louis Vitton cases would not help M&M here.

To successfully make a parody case in regards to trademark the parody itself must make it obvious that the defendant is not in anyway connected to the owner of the trademarked thing. The Morgan and Morgan ad doesn't do that; without the disclaimer at the beginning it wouldn't be obvious that the ad wasn't a animation created by Disney. (In the original Steamboat Willie, Mickey causes a number of accidents that harm other characters. Causing a car accident would not stand out from the list of things he does.) Importantly, a disclaimer doesn't really mean much for trademark law since this body of law is about how the trademark is used.

Why does MOB get away with parodying the LV bag (in the case you cite)? Well, for starters they didn't just rip off the look of an LV bag; they stylized their renderings of the LV bags to over-emphasize aspects of the LV bags that weren't actually present in the LV bags (but were clearly evocative of the bags). They also were juxtaposing the stylized LV bag against their own product.

The case you cited also specifically refers to other LV cases in which the defendants lost (and LV won). In one case, Hyundai briefly displayed a basketball with a logo very similar to LV's trademarked monogram. Hyundai lost, even though the ad was about the ostentatiousness of luxury goods (i.e., social commentary), because nothing about the parody itself indicated that the trademark owner wasn't involved (and indeed, part of why Hyundai lost was because there was evidence that people believed that LV was making limited-edition basketballs and wanted to buy them).

More on point, the defendant in the Debbie Does Dallas case was sued by the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, and lost, even though DDD is clearly a parody. The problem is that the parody was not sufficiently specific to the trademarked content (in this case, the uniform), and also it wasn't clear from the content of the film itself that the DCC wasn't connected to the film.

[ziml77]

> To successfully make a parody case in regards to trademark the parody itself must make it obvious that the defendant is not in anyway connected to the owner of the trademarked thing. The Morgan and Morgan ad doesn't do that; without the disclaimer at the beginning it wouldn't be obvious that the ad wasn't a animation created by Disney.

This is what I was wondering about. Do those disclaimers make it okay? Because without that context it certainly feels like this ad could be officially endorsed by Disney. And that seems to be exactly the kind of thing trademark law is meant to deal with: avoiding trust problems from people being misled about who is selling them what.

[toast0]

Maybe I'm just not up on my understanding, but I don't see how this is parody? There's not really any jokes, it's not a commentary on Disney, Disney's Mice, or boating or driving or society at large. Maybe running into a car on the road with a boat is a joke, I guess.

[dylan604]

A ship running into a car isn't a joke to you?

[freejazz]

>Mickey is still a trademark of the Disney corporation.

Mickey, yeah. But steamboat willie is covered by a copyright that has now since expired.

[happyopossum]

Steamboat Willie has been part of Disney animations trademark for at least a decade. It is literally the trademark animation used at the beginning of every Disney animation film.

[klustregrif]

You cannot use a trademark to extend a copyright. Lego tried and failed.

[freejazz]

And? Trademark isn't copyright law. It doesn't operate the same way. You can indicate that something isn't being used as a mark to indicate source (all trademark protects) and therefore it isn't necessarily an infringement of someone's mark, the same way direct verbatim copying would most likely be.

What's your point anyway? That copyright should be subsumed into trademark? Some others here are posting it, not that it makes any sense. Even funnier, they complain about the term limitations of copyright... but trademarks are indefinite.

Oh here I go arguing about IP law on HN again...

[kbelder]

Deliberately so, because they knew it was leaving copyright protection. This was their strategy to keep it locked up.

[nomel]

To help understand your comment, are you a lawyer?

[gamblor956]

Yes.

If this was a case that Morgan and Morgan expected to win they would not have withdrawn the ad.

That they did indicates that they don't even believe their own claims.

[toast0]

OTOH, making a bunch of noise about the case gets the ad and their product seen by a different demographic than paying for the ad to be placed wherever they would have. IMHO, this is an alternate marketing campaign, costs go to the courts instead of broadcasters. There's some public benefit if the case generates precedent, so that's nice that they want to spend their ad budget on this.

[eYrKEC2]

In law, isn't the process the punishment frequently? What if they're just expecting Disney to drain their coffers with frivolous legal work? Isn't that a reasonable response then?

[freejazz]

It prevents Disney from being able to file TRO or preliminary injunction preventing the commercial from being aired (and protected M&M from having to spend resources fighting that, which will do nothing to actually determine the overall outcome of the case).

Skeptical that gamblor is an attorney, they certainly do not seem to know what they are talking about.