![]() "We gotta change the name of our band, because we're so scary hard that Godzilla and the people surrounding Godzilla want nothing to do with us," lead vocalist Nick Danger writes on, which is being shuttered. The Arizona rock band Asshole Godzilla lost its name and internet domain. Terms of the settlement (.pdf) were not disclosed As a result, Subway removed a seconds-long snippet in its broadcast commercial showing an animated dinosaur meandering through a downtown - in what Toho argued was a depiction of Godzilla stomping through Tokyo. In September, for example, Doctor's Associates, the owner of Subway, settled a lawsuit brought by Toho over its "Five-Dollar Foot-Long" sandwich campaign. It's surprising how much this character is misused in a variety of contexts, especially by major advertisers." Shephard speculates, "If they used Star Wars or Simpsons characters, I guarantee you they would have sought permission. The Hollywood studio paid an undisclosed amount to Toho after it was sued. Warner Bros., for example, didn't know it needed Toho's permission to use Godzilla in a 1985 chase scene in Tim Burton's Pee Wee's Big Adventure. But it's not just the underground and gray-market profiteers who've been accused of violating Godzilla's rights. ![]() Policing Godzilla's rights, or the rights of any fictional character, has become a Sisyphean labor with the explosion of BitTorrent, video and file sharing sites, and direct-to-consumer sales in an ever expanding online world. rex has emaciated bird-like arms and stands at a 45-degree angle." He's got muscular arms, scaly skin and spines on back and tail and he breathes fire and has a furrowed brow," Moss says, repeating arguments Toho often makes in its lawsuits. If you want to get a rise out of the soft-spoken Moss, ask him something like, "Isn't Godzilla just an overgrown Tyrannosaurus rex?" This court finds that the mark is very strong, as it requires a large amount of imagination to associate the mark Godzilla with the character it represents."Īnd it's not just the beast's name that enjoys the protection of the courts it's also his distinctive looks. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian wrote, is "a fanciful, arbitrary word used to describe a fire-breathing, prehistoric, often-schizophrenic dinosaur. And the court set aside Morrow's assertions that the name Godzilla, which is a combination of two Japanese words for gorilla and whale, didn't deserve protection because it did not have any real meaning. In blocking the book's publication, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that the book would likely hurt sales of a licensed and competing book from Random House. Supreme Court has called "the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights." Toho, like other intellectual property rights holders, is emboldened by its use of the power of prior restraint - the ability to block a publication's release - an exercise the U.S. court system is one of his staunchest allies. While Godzilla's onscreen friends and foes vary from film to film, in real life the U.S. People don't understand or believe that the character that first appeared in a Japanese black-and-white in 1954 is a closely guarded piece of intellectual property, and rarely do suspected infringers know that Godzilla's movie music and pictures are copyrighted, and that his distinctive features and name are trademarked. Unlike E.T., the Predator or the slimy extraterrestrial from Alien, Godzilla is often regarded by the public as community property. That policing is a full time job, in part because of Godzilla's uniquely embedded place in U.S. "If you don't, the trademark becomes devalued and hard to enforce." "As a trademark owner, one of the requirements is to police your mark to ensure that it does not become generic, that it does not become a common word for any fire-breathing monster," says Aaron Moss, a Toho attorney in Los Angeles. Godzilla attorneys Aaron Moss, left, and Charles Shephard show off unlicensed Godzillas that Yankee Stadium vendors were hawking without Toho's permission. For Toho, too much unlicensed or misappropriated Godzilla could irrevocably free the monster from the protection of trademark law. The company's lawyers say they're just trying to keep their flagship property from slipping into generic status. They take a broad view of their rights."īut the rampage of litigation, real and threatened, isn't naked aggression. Douglas Masters, a Chicago attorney charged with defending the intellectual property estate of Elvis Presley, says Toho "has been very aggressive.
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