Intellectual Property Law

Save the Bolton Six; Obama chooses Creative Commons

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

Bad news from Bolton. The Bolton News reports that the six of seven dwarves in Bolton?s festive production of Snow White will not be named Doc, Dopey, Sleepy, Grumpy, Happy and Bashful after Disney asserted its copyright in the names. Although the story of Snow White was first ?codified? in the 19th Century by the Brothers Grimm, the dwarves were first given their names in Disney?s 1937 film. The show will go on though, and the Bolton Six will be known as Goody, Loopy, Lazy, Growler, Noisy and Shabby. Sneezy?s name, for reasons that the story doesn?t elaborate on, will retain his moniker.

The IPKat is puzzled. Since when were names protected by copyright? At best characters may perhaps have some protection (but probably not) and from the new names, it looks like the characters may be broadly the same.

Obama and Creative Commons

CNET reports that the website of US President Elect Barak Obama is now licenced under a Creative Commons Licence. The version chosen and displayed on change.gov allows users to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work, and to make derrivative works, as long as the source is attributed.

The IPKat cautions that this may not be a reliable indicator of Obama?s overall copyright policy. After all, politicians want their official ?message? to be distributed as widely as possible. This may not be true of their views on their other works, and the works of others.

Full post as published by IPKat on December 02, 2008 (boomark / email).