Is Stephen Hawkings "voice" trademarked (or copyrighted, or whatever is appropriate)?

Factual Questions
1

Whenever he appears on TV, Hawking is slumped in his wheel chair, with the same look, with that computer generated voice speaking Hawking’s thoughts.

I assume this is done via software that reads the words he types, and “speaks” the words via an algorithm and a synthesized voice.

Question: Is that legally Hawkings “voice”? Or is anyone able to use that same guy, tone and all, to communicate with the masses when their own voice doesn’t work?

I have no idea how Hawking sounds, so this computer voice, to me, is him. I think he should have singular usage of that voice…

Tangent question. - what if someone using that same program and same voice calls up someone and says things that can be considered inappropriate… the voice pattern will match Hawkings perfectly, and he could be in a heap of trouble. Is this possible?
(I don’t know why my mind forces these questions out. It just does.)

2

His voice synthesiser is a very old off the shelf product. The West coast accent is a reflection of the technical heritage of the device. That he has not updated from what is a very very obsolete voice synthesiser is to some extent because it has become something of a trademark voice for him.

As to it being actually trademarked, one would very much doubt it. But that isn’t to say that he could not do so. Certainly another guy talking astrophysics using that voice would be clearly both deriving from Hawking’s work, and leading to possible confusion with Hawking. To that extent Hawking could argue for a design patent or trademark. But it would simply not be worth his time or energy. Trademarks require registering in each country that they are used, must be defended it violated, or they are lost, and he needs to actually be doing trade there.

Anyone actually doing something that infringed on Hawking’s public persona would be simply branded an a****** and would ruin their career. You can’t buy protection like that at any price.

3

I think he did actually upgrade a while back, but only after finding one that could be programmed to sound like his old one, because, yes, the old one has become his trademark.

(But, no, I’m pretty sure it’s not trademarked.)

4

I distinctly recall that the Macs in the library at my junior high school, c. 1995-1996, had a text-to-speech program that produced the exact same voice as Hawking uses to this day.

Given that he didn’t create the software he could hardly “trademark” it, and there are certainly more sophisticated text-to-speech synthesizers out there these days, but my understanding is that he’s fond of it and considers it his voice.

5

The aviation weather radio/TV station we get uses the same (or a very similar) voice, so we often have conversations like:

Husband: “Hey, is it supposed to rain today?”

Me: “No, Stephen Hawking says it won’t start raining until after midnight.”

Every once in a while they switch it out for a female voice with some interesting quirks. I once choked on my coffee because she said, “South Day-co-TANS are advised to seek shelter…”

6

A trademark is what it says - a mark of your trade. Hawking is a professional physicist who also does media appearances as a professional physicist. That is his trade. He could certainly argue that a distinctive mark of his trade is his now well known voice. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t invent the voice, what matters is that it is a distinctive mark of his appearance in the media. Similarly, a design patent could protect the voice. The best known example (soon to fade from our shop shelves) is the distinctive yellow of a box of Kodak film. They have a design patent on the colour. They didn’t invent yellow. But if anyone else tried to market film in a yellow box they would find themselves in breach of Kodak’s patent.

Hawking could argue that someone else using his voice and talking astrophysics would cause confusion in the listener about the identity of the speaker, and would harm Hawking’s trade due to confusion. It is stretch, but not beyond possibility. This isn’t to say there is anything stopping you using the same voice for some other form of trade. You would not be stopped from using it to talk sociology, or to sell insurance. But you might run into trouble talking about chemistry or electronics.

If someone decided to try to do astrology with the the voice I think Hawking would be within his rights to sue, and successfully, trademark design patent or not.

No being an IP lawyer, I don’t know whether voices have been allowed as trade marks or design patents, but given a colour can be, the use of a voice in a more modern media does not seem unreasonable.

7

the synthesizer us a product sold for public use. if the sound could be protected it would have to be freely available to who ever had the product. that software could be used in many products. the synthesizer audio outputs might be sound bits (allophones) which can’t be protected. IANAL.

8

Here’s an article about the synthesizer. Sam is apparently an interesting guy - never met him personally, but I know his girlfriend… :slight_smile:

9

Well, there’s a guy who’s been trying to convince the world that aside from a Ph.D, Dr. Hawking has also earned himself the title of MC, dropping hardcore science on topics like entropy, or otherwise just inciting the crowd to "rock out with your Hawk out."

At the moment, no lawsuit is pending.

10

Hawking has a sense of humor (he likes The Simpsons a lot) and he does seem to like it.

11

We have a parking ticket machine here in Winnipeg that has Steven Hawkins inside operating it, or so it seems from its voice.

12

As an aside, there is now a market for products that digitize phonemes using an individuals voice. These products are used by people diagnosed with progressive disorders (motor neuron disease or similar) that will eventually leave them unable to speak. Before that happens, they use the software so that when they cannot speak, the synthesiser will maintain their own voice. It takes a lot of work, involving reading and recording large tracts of text without errors for automated processing.

I think that it is a pretty cool use of technology.

Si

13

Broadening the OP slightly, is it legal for a voice impersonator to do the narration for a TV advert or something, and endorse a product?

Here in the UK there are currently some adverts voiced by a Morgan Freeman impersonator, but every advert he reveals he is not actually Morgan Freeman. Got me wondering if they would be any legal issues without the reveal.

14

I would be pretty certain that Morgan Freeman would be able to successfully sue if there was not a disclaimer. Even if he does not currently do paid endorsements (I have no idea, if he does, Googling for such turns up a fraudulent political endorsement that swamps everything else) he clearly is in a position to make serious money on the back of his voice and stature. A nobody voice impersonator in an advert that is overtly taking from that stature is, by this deception, damaging Morgan’s ability to make money from endorsements, and potentially diluting his stature as an actor. Also, it may well be just plain fraud, as it would be reasonably assumed by many people as actually being Morgan making the endorsement. One notes that many US actors won’t make ads in the US, as it dilutes their apparent stature as an actor, but they will make ads overseas - especially in Asia, where some have a huge following.

15

Yeah, that’s what I thought. The thing that gave me pause was what if my natural speaking voice happened to sound a lot like the Morg’s? Would I not be allowed to do voiceovers? Where do you draw the line?

16

Somewhat tangential, I suppose, but the (sadly not renewed) BBC adult puppet show, Mongrels, included a “Morgan Freeman lamb” with a badly impersonated Morgan Freeman voice. So far as I know, Morgan Freeman neither endorsed nor sued the show. :slight_smile:

17

This is not likely to be a trademark issue (or a copyright issue for that matter).

What it might be is a personality rights (right of publicity) issue, which is governed differently in every U.S. state.

If someone impersonates Freeman’s voice or Hawking’s voice, it could give rise to a claim of misappropriation of one’s image, identity, likeness, or voice, depending on what the law of the particular state has chosen to protect.

Reasons why it can’t be a trademark issue – A trademark is a symbol, image, word (or possibly sound, color, or odor) that is used in commerce to identify of the source of goods and services.

A person’s name used just as a name is not considered such a use in commerce and I’m pretty sure that a person’s voice wouldn’t either.

For Hawking to claim his voice as a trademark, he can’t just say “this is my mark because it’s what I sound like when I talk.” He has to be offering goods and services and he has to show that he intentionally uses his voice as the brand for those goods or services. And even then, I can’t see how he could make a claim for anything and everything that might possibly be spoken using that voice. He would have to identify a particular word or phrase. And then he would also have to show that the general goods-or-services-purchasing public used that voice to identify what they wanted to buy.

Also significant is the fact that some other commercial entity made that voice for him, presumably for use by more than just one of its customers.

Someone would have to prove that it was Hawking that made the call. The fact that it is a lot easier to fake Hawking’s voice than it is to fake someone else’s voice would make it harder to prove.

My recommendation is to forget that the words “trademark” and “copyright” have the part participial verb forms “trademarked” and “copyrighted.”

The way that the law works, the question is almost never whether something has been “copyrighted” or “trademarked.”

Copyright protection attaches automatically upon creation of a creative, original work of expression that is fixed in a perceivable medium.

Trademark protection attaches based on the use of a distinctive word, image, etc., in commerce as the identifier of the source of goods or services. Someone might have “registered a trademark” (not “trademarked”), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they actually hold exclusive rights.

18

When he “appeared” on The Simpsons and Futurama, did he actually go to the studio in person to record? They could just use a synthesizer and saved him the journey.

19

sound could be recorded right at his home, right from his synthesizer plugged into a recording device.

20

A lot of voicing for animation is done remotely these days. I believe that on Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, all the guest voices were done by telephone.