On 26th April each year the World Intellectual Property Organisation celebrates World IP Day. The subject this year is the world of film: “Movies – a global passion“.

WIPO has a dedicated page on its website and also a World IP Day Facebook page to help promote discussion of IP at the movies. Of particular interest is an overview of the IP rights that can be found from script to screen.

As regular readers will know IPcopy has posted a number of articles that take a light-hearted look at IP as it appears in the media (films, TV, news reports etc) as an excuse to talk about different IP topics. So here, to celebrate World IP Day, are the film related posts from our IP – Hit or miss? series.

The Lego Movie

The Lego movie. Is. Awesome. And certainly much more fun than revising for the EQE pre-exam, which is what I probably should have been doing with my Saturday afternoon (here’s hoping the claim analysis section is all about co-operable building blocks). There are thrills; there are spills; there’s some beautifully poignant humour. It’s the Matrix meets Toy Story 3.

Enough advertising: the reason I get to write about the Lego Movie here is that there’s a delightful little patent sub-sub-sub-plot involving Lego Batman. Which gives me the perfect excuse to assess the IP reference for our IP Hit or Miss series, in the interests of IP education, you understand. The potential ‘spoilers’ are so minor as to be barely worthy of the word, but if you don’t want to see a few paraphrased words from the movie, you may wish to look away now. (more…)

Armageddon

Image – courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.

One of our readers suggested we take a look at Armageddon. This 1998 action/adventure sci-fi starring Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck has already been established as a science fail (1,2,3) but how accurate are the IP references made in the movie?

For those readers not familiar with Armageddon, the film revolves around an impending asteroid impact on Earth and a plan to drill deep into the asteroid and detonate a large enough nuclear weapon to split the asteroid into two pieces and thus avoid the end of the world. Bruce Willis plays the character Harry Stamper, the best deep-sea oil driller in the world, who is initially brought in to be an advisor to NASA. (more…)

Iron Man 2 (& Men in Black)

In the film Iron Man 2, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) gets into an argument with his friend Lt. Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Don Cheadle) who, after a bout of CGI enhanced fighting, makes off with one of his Iron Man suits.

Shortly after this, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) who is CEO of Stark Industries is seen berating someone on the telephone about the suit that has gone missing. During the call she says the following (as near as I recall):

“Illegal seizure of trademarked property”

and

“Don’t tell me we have the best patent lawyers in the country and then not pursue this” (more…)

Doctor Who

I say old chap. You haven’t seen my sonic screwdriver, have you?

OK, this one isn’t a film but, hey, there were two films released in the Sixties that featured a version of the Doctor so I’m going to take that as enough of an excuse to include the TV version here.

Does The Doctor know his IP from his elbow?

Incidentally, just in case you’re wondering, there is an (admittedly tenuous) intellectual property (IP) connection to this story!

In the episode in question, Silence in the Library (trailer below), the Doctor and Donna are summoned to a planet sized library, The Library, via a message received on the Doctor’s psychic paper where they encounter a team of explorers led by Professor Song and funded by Mr Lux. The Doctor and Donna are encouraged to sign non-disclosure agreements upon encountering the team in order to ensure that their “individual experiences inside the Library are the intellectual property of the Felman Lux Corporation.” (more…)

Mark Richardson 24 April 2014