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February 2018
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Tarnishing The History Of Martin Luther King Jr.: Copyright Enforcement Edition

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It is no secret that the estate of Martin Luther King Jr. have a long and unfortuate history of trying to lock up or profit from the use of his stirring words and speeches. We've talked about this issue going back nearly a decade and it pops up over and over again. By now you've probably heard that the car brand Dodge (owned by Chrysler) used a recording of a Martin Luther King Jr. speech in a controversial Super Bowl ad on Sunday. It kicked up quite a lot of controversy -- even though his speeches have been used to sell other things in the past, including both cars and mobile phones.King's own heirs have been at war with each other and close friends in the past few years, suing each other as they each try to claim ownership over rights that they don't want others to have. Following the backlash around the Super Bowl ad, the King Center tried to distance itself from the ad, saying that they have nothing to do with approving such licensing deals:

However, as Paul Levy explains, this distancing appears wholly disingenuous given that the King Center partnered with the organization that does handle the licensing -- Intellectual Properties Management -- and that organization... appears to work on the premises of the King Center.
The King Center issued a Twitter statement distancing itself from the grant of permission to use the speech in the ad, without owning up to the fact that Center itself refers users to Intellectual Properties Management for requests to use the works and intellectual property of Dr. King, and that this commercial licensing operation is conducted on the King Center's own premises. In short, there is a long and sordid history of King's heirs monetizing their pretensions to control of historic references to their illustrious forebearer.Intellectual Properties Management issued a statement indicating that it had licensed the specific use made of the speech in the ad as being consistent with Dr. King's philosophy. Dodge refused to tell me what the fee was, claiming that the amount is proprietary information; IPM never responded to questions about the amount of the fee and how the payment is being used.
Furthermore, Chrysler's own statement about this notes that it had "the privilege of working closely with the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. to celebrate these words..." So, as Levy notes, even as the Estate tries to distance itself, it appears to have been involved, and passing off the blame on a separate operation that is closely tied to itself that handles licensing of King's words seems like weak sauce.But this story gets even crazier. It didn't take long for people to look at the full "Drum Major Instinct" sermon that was the basis for the Dodge ad, and realize that, elsewhere in the speech, it included some rather pointed comments about advertising -- and explicitly mentioning car advertising as the kind of thing he was complaining about:
We are so often taken by advertisers. You know, those gentlement of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things that, kinda gets you on the vine. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whisky. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive THIS type of car.... And you know, before you know it, you're just buying that stuff? I've got to drive THIS CAR, because it's something about THIS CAR that makes my car a little better than my neighbor's car.
Which, you know... looks pretty damning. So then the folks at Current Affairs took the original Ram commercial and overlayed it with that part of the speech.
And then they posted it to YouTube... where Chrysler issued a copyright takedown. No joke.
Of course, the video is now back up, either because Chrysler realized how bad this looked or someone at YouTube decided this was safely in fair use territory. Either way, we're not embedding the original ad here, but you might want to see this reimagined one:
Either way, as Michael Hirtzik at the LA Times notes in a thorough and fairly comprehensive article, this (once again) demonstrates why it's so problematic that this content is locked up, rather than open to the public. Hirtzik argues for moving the licensing efforts away from the King Estate entirely:
Given King's unique stature as a public figure, it's proper to ask why members of his family should have the last word on licensing. The easy answer is that it's because the law gives them that right. But that's a technicality, albeit a decisive one. But if they're really determined to protect their father's legacy, they should consider voluntarily turning over the decision-making process to a different, or at least a larger, entity. A foundation board comprising scholars and historians, for instance, with advisory roles for business experts and, sure, family members.The process should be open and transparent, so at least we don't have a situation where some corporation drapes itself in King's preacherly robes while the estate issues fatuous excuses that a TV commercial embodies "Dr. King's philosophy." That doesn't make anyone involved look good, or honest.
But, I wouldn't jump so quickly over the "the law gives them that right" part. We should zero in on that and ask why? Why is this the proper public policy result? Why do we allow copyright to be granted on such a thing? Why don't we more widely to allow such things to be used under fair use? Why are we so focused on locking up the legacy of people that we have to license every word they said, rather than letting the world make use of them to build on them, to comment on them and to share them more freely? The King Estate and its attempt to hide away from the blame over this licensing decision is one thing. But the underlying copyright issues should not be ignored as well. None of this would be possible if our copyright laws were sane and reasonable.

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posted at: 12:00am on 06-Feb-2018
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Two Years Later, Bell's Brewery Finally Fails To Bully A Tiny Brewery Out Of Its Legitimate Trademark

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Nearly three years ago, Bell's Brewery, whose products I used to buy greedily, decided to oppose a trademark for Innovation Brewing, a tiny operation out of North Carolina. The reasons for the opposition are truly difficult to comprehend. First, Bell's stated that it uses the slogan "Bottling innovation since 1985" on some merchandise. This was only barely true. The slogan does appear on some bumper stickers that Bell sells and that's pretty much it. It appears nowhere in any of the brewery's beer labels or packaging. Also, Bell's never registered the slogan as a trademark. Bell's also says it uses the slogan "Inspired brewing" and argues that Innovation's name could create confusion in the marketplace because it's somehow similar to that slogan.This is a good lesson in why trademark bullying of this nature is a pox on any industry derived largely of small players, because it's only in the past weeks that the Trademark Trials and Appeals Board in Virginia has ruled essentially that Bell's is full of crap.

The federal Trademark Trials and Appeals Board in Virginia says there is little chance of confusion by consumers and dismissed Bell’s action on Dec. 20.Bell’s says it is moving on. “We respect the Trademark Office’s decision and look forward to doing business as usual,” the brewery said in an emailed statement to Xpress.
That's simply not good enough. Innovation is roughly one-sixtieth the size of Bell's, producing 500 barrels a year, and representing a zero threat to the much larger company. And, yet, for three years Innovation has been tied up in this federal action trying to simply register the name of the brand upon which it built its small business. Also, and I cannot stress this enough, the claims that Bell's was making were plainly absurd. Those claims included stating that the words "innovation" and "inspired" had the same or similar meanings to the degree the public would be confused. They don't. It attempted to block a trademark over a slogan it barely uses and never registered. There was never any reason to do any of this.Yet, we have three years of bullying action. At the end of that bullying, Bell's gets to waltz away and say it is "moving on", with the legal costs representing a decimal point on its ledger, whereas Innovation has no such war chest and was almost certainly impeded in its business having to deal with all of this. If that isn't the kind of thing the legal system should be better designed to handle, I cannot imagine what would be.

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