Since this thread was bumped by others I’ll just pop in to inform anybody interested and not already aware that Norman Mailer’s new book, The Castle in the Forest, is about Hitler’s family, early life. The narrator is a devil who was the Gabriel in Hitler’s conception and watched over him in his youth. (I haven’t read the book, this is just from reviews.)
Yeah, I’m reasonably familiar with this area of the law. And while these two concepts are indeed different, they both fall under the same category of intellectual property.
More to the point, prior to your post where you made your “urban legends” pronouncement, neither of the two replies that discussed this issue limited themselves to trademark. Balduran spoke of “rights” and “royalties”, neither of which terms are limited to trademark. In fact, they are more generally associated with copyrights. Then mobo85 replied, speaking both of trademark and copyright, asserting that the MLK estate had sued a news organization for reprinting the speech. And while he may not have had the details right (which is why I referred to these earlier posts as “substantially correct”), the general thrust of his claim was accurate.
You then made your dismissive “urban legend” claim, apparently in your belief that failure to register a trademark bars any type of intellectual property claim. (In fact, it doesnt even preclude a trademark claim, let alone a copyright claim.)
So I pointed out your error, with ample cites, referring to both trademark and copyright. The MLK estate has indeed vigorously asserted its intellectual property rights in MLK’s likeness, writings, speeches and recordings. Even the use of the phrase “I have a Dream” by others has been challenged on tradename/trademark grounds. Copyright challenges have been even more common. All of this was well established by my cites, one of which describes a lawsuit against a news organization for using the text of the speech, just as mobo claimed, although he may have had some details wrong.
But instead of admitting your error, or even equivocating, your second post tries to justify your claim that this was all just an “urban legend”, a term that is commonly understood to mean that that claim it is referred to has no basis in fact, and is even somewhat ridiculous.
If you mean to only challenge the small part of mobo*s post that referred to registration you should have said so. You did not. You attacked the entire claim as an urban legend, which it is assuredly not. You were wrong.
Baloney, I said no such thing, nor have any such idiotic belief. Don’t try to put words into my mouth. Nowhere in my response did I make any claim, one way or another about copyright. If I had wanted to talk about copyright, I would have, ok?
I was responding to the claim someone else made that “The name and likeness of Martin Luther King are registered trademarks of the King Family Foundation.”
I am familiar with the topic of intellectual property. I’m a former book editor, my brother is an intellectual property lawyer, and I’m a law student also going to the intellectual property field.
And that was the “urban legend” that you were debunking?
Funny sort of urban legend. Very specific and legalistic.
But I will take your word for it that you weren’t disputing bolo’s main, much more general point that the King Estate sues people who reprint the I Have A Dream spech, or otherwise use Dr. King’s name or image.
You knew that all the time, right? Given your superior law student status and all.
I admit I was incorrect in my statement that Dr. King’s name and/or likeness is a registered trademark, although it is true that King’s image and speeches are very much legally enforced by a company owned by his son. (There are numerous dead celebrities whose names are trademarked- Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley, to name a few.)
More on the rights to celebrity names, images and voices in this thread.
Random. Quit being a dick. Yeah, I know—you’re a lawyer.
You reopened an old thread in GQ with a kvetch. That’s a no-no. If you have a problem, open another thread and link to this one. The whole MLK thing wasn’t even the OP.
Closed.
samclem GQ moderator
And I apologize for calling you a “dick.” Out of place for me to have done that.