Who Is Your Lawyer? » Arcana

Borrowing Genius

Robert Scott Lawrence — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 04:14:59 +0000

Generally, no one tries to plagiarize Shakespeare because – among other reasons – getting caught is a foregone conclusion. But occasionally an intemperate, hot-blooded youth will think a little borrowing and re-mixing is simply fair play, and appropriate passages wholesale from the canon that would make your hair stand on end.

Some might say that there is neither rhyme nor reason to the rule of plagiarism when the great Bard himself (whether he be William Shakespeare, Edward de Vere, or some other creature) was among the most liberal of “borrowers” of his time, prone even in the late 1500s to call upon heaven to turn a blind eye to the plotlines and dialogue he took from Italian drama and refashioned into elegiac English pentameter. The gods favored Shakespeare for his genius, just as we favor our own homegrown talents. Even after all these long centuries, love is still blind to the transgressions of those we hold dear.

The question of plagiarism is not nearly as much of a wild goose chase as it was in what some refer to as the Golden Ages of literature. Though those may have been better days (just as we may have seen better days), nowadays we can parse a script for plagiarism with the push of a button, and publishers, universities, scholars and even high schools have now invested in software that vets essays for misappropriations from Wikipedia and the ubiquitous internet. There is even software that catches paraphrasing of plagiarized text, so rewriting passages by changing tense or the names of characters, or slightly modifying the dialogue from a scene will almost invariably be found out sooner or later.

But is this demand for wholly “new” material really too much of a good thing? Artists have always been influenced by what they read and saw, and style and phrasing, plot and dialogue are absorbed almost by osmosis, so the occasional similarity or recreation of a long-forgotten passage is not always conscious plagiarism. And where it is a conscious appropriation, there is nothing necessarily inappropriate in having copied the material.

For example, my recent post, Plagiarizing Shakespeare, takes individual lines from Othello, The Tempest, Merry Wives of Windsor, Cymbeline, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Timon of Athens, and Romeo and Juliet, and rearranges them to do something entirely different with the language. I am not writing a play, or fashioning a poem, but reusing language from 500 years ago to make something new, weaving in transitional phrases and other original content, capping it off with a misquoted line from George Meredith, and creating a pastiche that is something entirely new.

Would this be deemed fair use under a modern copyright analysis? I would argue strongly that it is, for copyright protects the exact phrasing of the work, not a snippet here and a snippet there snatched from random texts and rearranged to suit their new creator. An enterprising artist could create an entirely new play using lines lifted from 100 other plays, and the work would be new, original, his – not copyright infringement.

In this modern day and age of litigiousness we fear to borrow, since our idea of what is fair will not necessarily jibe with that of the copyright holder, or with that of any judge deciding the issue of infringement. But given our penchant for sacrificing the old in favor of the new – indeed, what some would say is a preoccupation with newness at the expense of almost anything else, including virtue – it is unsurprising that some dare to fly where others fear to tread. The re-mixers, samplers, mash-up artists and liberal borrowers are not only a force to be reckoned with but also a force for good. For there can be no doubt that we lose beautiful language, apt turns of phrase and broad flights of fancy if we are obliged to leave them untouched in dusty library tomes, where they will die unseen by a generation that demands that its content be hot off the press, fresh, newborn like Adam on the first day of creation.

Truth be told, borrowing is an essential part of the creative process, transforming the old into the new, making matter out of dust, gold from glitter, a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. We would do well to remember that appropriation is neither misappropriation nor misattribution, but sometime simply just another form of genius.

Shakespeare Veritas

Robert Scott Lawrence — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:56 +0000

O gracious lady,

Since I received command to do this business I have not slept one wink. If you asked it of me, I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porcupine.

At thy instance I ran from pillar to post, crossed channel and ocean wide, and was none the wiser for my travails. Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season, when in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason? But love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit. Yes, for a score of kingdoms you could wrangle, and I would call it fair play.

Can one desire too much of a good thing? I would see thee again, though we have seen better days. Put out thy hands, and light me a beacon for home. Send me a sign to come, and not one word more. I cannot bear this parting, so rich in sorrow, so protracted, so delicate, so poor.

The bell hath struck twelve; the minute draws on. Now, hot blooded Gods assist me! I yearn for the haven of thy heart. If thy wits run the wild goose chase, I am done, but thou hast more wits than I, and can see this through to its foregone conclusion. Though it be but a dream, remember in our shipwrecked days there was an hour when eve was left to us, and hushed we sat as lovers to whom time whispered.

Call me home, my lady, that we two can be as one.

Harry Potter and the Copyright Pirates

Robert Scott Lawrence — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 02:55:19 +0000

What is the Harry Potter Encyclopedia and why should you care?

The forthcoming Encyclopedia is intended by J. K. Rowling to be the authoritative directory of all creatures, persons, places, and things that make up the Harry Potter universe. Rowling has been working on it on and off for years, and every so often a snippet of activity sends the crowd into a mad frenzy over its supposed “impending” release. As long ago as April 2008, Rowling stated that she had begun work on the project in earnest. In September 2009 we were treated to a comment from fellow novelist Ian Rankin that Rowling “had been making family trees of all her characters,” only to learn from her publisher the following week that “the encyclopedia simply remains something Ms. Rowling would like to complete sometime in the future.”

In recent interviews, Rowling has unequivocally stated that she still intends to write the encyclopedia, but has been vague when pressed for details on the timing of its release. Rowling euphemistically refers to the Encyclopedia as “The Scottish Book,” an oblique reference to Macbeth, which as every theater-goer knows is only to be called “The Scottish Play” — and nothing else — unless the speaker wishes to invoke the curse of Macbeth. Among the many tragedies attributed to the curse, in 1672 the actor playing Macbeth substituted a real dagger for the blunted stage one and killed Duncan in full view of the audience. During a performance in New York in 1849, a riot broke out in which 31 people were trampled to death. In 1937, during Laurence Olivier’s first portrayal of Macbeth, his sword shattered and flew into the audience, striking a patron who immediately suffered a heart attack.

Given the superstitious tendencies of a writer whose chief villain is known only as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Rowling’s enigmatic reference is perhaps unsurprising, but no public hue and cry has been heard in connection with Harry Potter that can even remotely compare to Macbeth’s ill-fated fortunes. Perhaps Rowling fears that the breadth of detail envisioned by the Encyclopedia — which is rumored to include such diverse subjects as directions for splitting one’s soul into a Horcrux, how Lord Voldemort obtained a new body, and the backstory to Florean Fortescue’s murder — will give rise to a curse of its own.

Of course, while all of this is superficially interesting if you are a Harry Potter fan, from an intellectual property standpoint it would be decidedly ho-hum but for the fact that Rowling filed suit against a fan-created online encyclopedia called the Harry Potter Lexicon. Originally the brain-child of librarian Steve Vander Ark, the Lexicon – as one would expect from something called a lexicon — lists characters, places, creatures, spells, potions and magical devices, as well as analyzing magical theory and other details of the series. Famed for publishing one of the first timelines of events occurring in the Harry Potter universe, the Lexicon has been used as a reference source by Rowling herself, who admits that:

This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an internet café while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing).

Notwithstanding her purported admiration for it, when RDR Books proposed to publish a print version the Lexicon, Rowling filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in New York District Court seeking to enjoin its publication. Although the court recognized that authors do not have the right to stop the publication of reference guides and companion books about literary works, it nonetheless found that Vander Ark had exceeded the ambiguous boundary of “fair use” and ruled against the Lexicon and its valiant cohort of defenders. The upshot of the legal battle was that a less-than-comprehensive (and therefore less-than-exciting) version of the Lexicon was vetted and permitted to be published under the disingenuous title The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction.

Personally, I prefer the aptly-named Complete Idiot’s Guide to The World of Harry Potter, which suffers only from the fact that it attempts to be a scholarly work rather than the tongue in cheek farce that I would like to read and hope to find in an alternate universe. Perhaps if Ashton Kutcher ever gets around to making a sequel to The Butterly Effect, I’ll be able to find the version I’m really interested in.

Everlasting Trademarks

Robert Scott Lawrence — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 02:50:39 +0000

My idea of a perfect product is one that satisfies a need, and that never has to be replaced. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

In theory, this is how it works.

You get married, once, to someone you love. You’re still together for your golden anniversary and looking forward to platinum.

You buy your dream house, and keep it forever. The kids will always have their rooms, and won’t have to Google you when they get back from Spain and discover that you moved to Connecticut.

You furnish your home with things you actually like. For a year all you had in your house was an antique bed and a side table, but then you splashed out and filled the rest of the house with items that don’t need to be upgraded. You couldn’t afford it at the time, but you did it anyway, on the theory that it’s cheaper to buy what you want once than it is to keep upgrading every few years. Now you have your partners’ desk from 1889, a Tiffany lamp you found at an estate sale, and paintings from local artists who you’ve met and whose work you admire.

You buy a car and own it until it becomes a classic. You’re the suave guy in his 60s who’s been driving a Jaguar E-type for 40 years.

You buy enough classic suits to wear until you die (so don’t get fat). While you don’t have to leave 300 Caraceni suits to your grandson like Gianni Agnelli did, take a leaf out of Bobby Fisher’s playbook and buy 23 bespoke suits at a time.

You buy shoes that don’t die. Think Church. Think Alden. Yes, they cost a fortune, but they wear like iron. My father owned a pair of Alden cordovans for over 50 years, and only had to resole them three times.

You buy things that don’t break. Fiskars shovels with lifetime warranties (Fiskars guarantee: ”This product is warranted to the consumer purchaser to be free of defects in material and workmanship for as long as the consumer owns the product. At Fiskars Brands, Inc.’s option, defective product will be repaired, replaced or substituted with a product of equal value.”).

Baker furniture.

Umbrellas by the same company that’s been making them for the British royals for 200 years (each royal gets one umbrella issued at birth).

Mizuno blades.

Straight edge razors.

Purdey shotguns.

I could go on, of course, but you get the idea. Why isn’t life designed so that we can just buy one good thing and never have to replace it? Why is it that we are destined to a life in which cars are designed to get door dings at the slightest touch (which cost $700 to fix), iPads lack cameras until Gen 2, golf club manufacturers introduce new-and-improved lines every six months, memory upgrades force us to go out and buy new computers, and umbrellas fall apart in a stiff breeze? Why are we sentenced to a life in which things break within minutes of their unveiling?

I’ll tell you why.

It’s a dirty little secret called “planned obsolescence.” Some functionary figured out that companies could make more money if they designed and sold products that had to be replaced. Why build an unbreakable umbrella when you can create a product that has to be replaced twice during every business trip to the Windy City? Why market a straight edge razor when disposables have to be, as their very name informs us, “disposed of” every week? Why build to last when a tear-down or temporary is good enough for the moment and guarantees repeat business? Everybody accepts that this is the way life is, but it’s really a mockery of life when people scrabble to make a living to go on buying the same things over and over again. We think paper plates are convenient (“Great for parties!”), and never think we just cut down a forest so that we didn’t have to do the dishes, never think we just gave $5 to some corporate huckster for the privilege of having to buy paper plates over and over and over ad infinitum until the end of time.

I know the counterarguments, of course. We’ve all heard them. The critics who argue that life itself is impermanent, that convenience is as important as tradition, and that cheap means affordable to people who can’t afford better. Even Chuck Palahniuk got a dig in with his lamentation about the insane power of material things in Fight Club (“You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you”).

And for the most part, I don’t disagree. I’m not about to go off on some privileged rant like the mom in Midnight in Paris, who snidely remarks “Cheap is cheap” when the hero doesn’t feel like buying a $26,000 chair. But don’t tell me things can’t be made to last. They can. We know, empirically, that they can. But nobody wants to make them, because the world is fashioned so that fashion and fads are where the money is, and the hive mind follows along without ever wondering what the world would be like if we just built houses that were designed to last 500 years, so that eventually everyone would have a house; or made cars that didn’t explode at the slightest impact, so that everyone could have a car without making monthly car payments for their entire lives; or made shoes that lasted long enough so that everyone in the world could raise their hands and say they had a good pair and could now focus on discovering the cure for cancer or the Universal Theory of Everything.

When we build things that last, we buy ourselves time. Yes, it costs more upfront, but it is like investing in the infrastructure of the country. You have to pay to build the bridges now, so that people can get where they need to be in the future. Otherwise you’re stuck throwing up pontoon bridges and calling it a national emergency when it was just poor planning all along.

This is my homespun buy now-pay now-live now philosophy of life. For those of you who disagree or consider my attitude elitist in any way, please feel free to keep on drinking cava out of plastic cups.

Charlie Sheen and the Trademark Factory

Robert Scott Lawrence — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 01:08:10 +0000

I love trademarks, right? Because that’s what I do, trademark logos and cool sayings, and practice my VATICAN NINJA ASSASSIN moves on other attorneys who try to impede my God-given right to obtain the exclusive use to everyday words and catch phrases and lock them down so other people (i.e., you) have to pay my client a huge fee if you want to use them. You want to say FACE on television, buddy? That will be 10,000 smackeroos, or I’ll see you in court.

GOOGLE me if you think I’m joking, you YAHOO.

I’m the guy who helped get FACEBOOK the rights to BOOK, too, so that none of you literary types could even say the word in connection with anything at all, ever, unless you paid me. You want to open up a BOOK-store? Well, guess what, it’s “Show me the money!!!!” time here in Trademark City. Words are my business, and I will hoot and holler and grunt and even cry in front of the PTO and any commission you care to put me in front of so that I can have exclusive rights to any word I want. Just so you and I are clear: I have the ability to take common words such as BOX, or TOY — or even THING – and yank them out of the common lexicon.

Don’t know what LEXICON is? Good. That’s my word; I took that one years ago and now nobody even remembers it.

This is part of the strategy I market under the trademark DUH, WINNING, which is a phrase I coined in my ADONIS DNA-altered youth when I accidentally ingested TIGER BLOOD and transformed myself into a televangelist for over 30 seconds, and thereby participated in a divine revelation that eventually resulted in my worldwide nomination as a ROCK STAR FROM MARS.

You think you have LION BLOOD, or AVATAR BLOOD, or SCIENTOLOGY BLOOD like Tom Cruise? You think even tigers can say the words “tiger blood”? Well you don’t, and they can’t, because all of that is related to TIGER BLOOD, which can only be used with my permission.

In fact, anyone who wants to trademark any crazy words or phrases had better just see me first and cut a deal, because otherwise it is just NO GO, and NO DICE and NO WAY and NOT NICE. (I have trademark applications pending for those too, so you better watch it!)

If you have any questions about how trademarks work, call me on my cell at 1-(DUH)-WIN-NING.

Live Nude Copyrights

Robert Scott Lawrence — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:27:28 +0000

Dear readers, fans, intellectual property aficionados, and assorted paparazzi,

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve fallen down on the job. In strict counterpoint to Future Tom and his almost mythological daily posting, my production has withered as my workload has increased. The new move, the new job, the new commute, the new hairstyle — they all conspired to throw me off my game. Instead of posting jocular commentary about the insanity of the virtual world and the plebeian nearsightedness of the PTO, I have been applying myself at work, Hemingway-style, engaged in industry, high finance, and the tedium of document review. My lighthearted moments appear at increasingly longer ends of the sine wave, and tend to strike me unawares about 11:00 at night, when I climb into my IP-laden Tesla roadster and silently zip home on the toll roads to the Elysian hunting camp in which I now reside.

I post here in an almost-but-not-quite embarrassed fashion to explain to you that with respect to my blog — just as with my languishing marathon training — I have adopted a new resolve. I vow to post more frequently and regain the vigor of my misspent youth. If you thought I was amusing before, prepare yourself for an entirely new level of amusement, Rabelaisian in scope, Machiavellian in design, Neapolitan in choice of pastry.

And when, you ask, will this new romance commence?

Soon. Very soon. Perhaps as soon as the day after yesterday.

If you misplaced or forgot to bookmark my URL, please subscribe to my feed now. For those of you who hate to subscribe to things but still have sufficient neurological juice left in your big big brains to remember short phrases, just open up your browser and type “Who Is Your Lawyer” in one of its myriad forms (e.g., Who Is Your Lawyer, whoisyourlawyer, whois your lawyer, whoisyour lawyer, or even “who’s your lawyer” or “whos your lawyer“). Eventually, you will find your way to my site, as all variations of Who Is Your Lawyer? lead to me.

Be forewarned that on occasion these latter variations of my name will attempt to waylay the distractible reader with intriguing articles about the now-defunct series Rex Is Not Your Lawyer. As much as I hate to say it, that is not my series nor my site, as I am not David Tennant (however much I appreciate his work in Dr. Who).

World Famous Trademarks

Robert Scott Lawrence — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:48:03 +0000

The other day a friend of mine was talking about the way we recognize symbols and what they mean to us. He suggested that with the end of the series Smallville a huge portion of the nation’s bloated television audience would no longer be exposed to even a hint of the symbol of strength and courage by which the Man of Steel is known, but instead would find themselves unhappily relegated to watching re-runs of Cheers or M.A.S.H. or even older late-night paradigms of hopelessness (e.g., Archie Bunker). A symbol that we can look up to in times of trouble is something we all need, of course, but I found it oddly intriguing that the symbol he looked toward was a make-believe superhero from the Golden Age.

Upon further reflection, I attribute his thinking to the society we live in, which is inundated with stars both real and imagined, but which of late seems to have openly embraced the icons created so long ago by the stalwarts of the comics industry. Thus, recent years have seen a spate of movies about the Dark Knight, Daredevil, Iron Man, the X-Men, Wolverine, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four — to name a few — and the superhero bandwagon shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. This year alone has witnessed new films about the Green Hornet, the Green Lantern, and everyone’s favorite hammer-loving knucklehead, Thor.

America has grown so fond of heroes leaping around in multi-colored tights like jesters in a Shakespearian farce that a cottage industry has grown up devoted to making fun of superhero movies. Do you remember that Oh-so-forgettable Will Smith vehicle about the drunken superhero who drank to forget the sorrow of losing his one and only super-mate? Who had ditched him to marry a human and was hiding her own stupendous array of superpowers? Yes, I’m talking about Hancock, for any of you brave enough to own up to having seen it.

But I’m not just talking about overt (and some might say ham-handed) rips on superhero-dom, but about more subtle plays on the nature of the beast as well. For example, let’s look at Kung Fu Panda, which I will admit was a winner not only at the box office but in the hearts and minds of little kiddies everywhere. Like many a Jack Black film, if you liked the Jack Black vibe you were already halfway to liking the movie. Unlike many of his lesser efforts, however, this had a sustained brilliance that perfectly encapsulated the idea behind much of superhero fandom — i.e., it captured the idea of the lonely, overlooked boy who acquires fabulous powers that make the world sit up and take notice. That’s the bit that draws boys in, but if they graduate from the comics of the 60s and 70s and grow up to be lifelong fans (or even sporadic enthusiasts), attentive readers will recognize that after the initial phase of “Hey, this is great! Look everyone! I’ve got super powers!!” the other shoe drops, and the recipient finds that with great powers comes great responsibility. I like to call this the “Oh, c^*%. I’ve got to save the world!” phase of the superhero relationship, in which our hero stalks about all broody and reluctant until struck by a much-needed ray of enlightenment. This concept was magnificently riffed on in the utterly fantastic Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which is a thoroughly engaging hybrid of the superhero supernova. It is — literally — a movie that makes fun of the concept of superheroes while embracing and making the concept itself fun. Which is almost a zen koan, really.

Of course, I’m oversimplifying. I recognize that some superheroes were created broody from the start. The Silver Surfer only assumed the mantle of his powers in order to try and save his dying race and/or bring back his one true love. And Batman’s psychoses, of course, sprang from having witnessed his own parents’ murder.

Other of the supers were created in a burst of patriotism, and we will soon be privy to the birth of Captain America as he steps to life from the narrow silhouette of his tubercular mortal host, Private Steve Rogers. Cap’s heroism was born in WWII and his history is an almost perverse echo of America’s own — he is steeped in the blood of America’s enemies, having fought in virtually all its wars, including the Cold War, as well as other wars that are too secret to reveal to our citizens outside the confines of Marvel Comics. If Wikileaks could reveal Cap’s history, I have no doubt we would be appalled and thrilled in equal parts.

What does all of this mean from the standpoint of symbols? In a very real way, what the public focuses on and recognizes, what draws our attention, is the same sort of packaging that corporations use to draw the public in. We recognize the Superman symbol in the same way we recognize the Nike swoosh. We recognize the Bat signal thrown up in the sky the same way we recognize the shadow of the Golden Arches. The logos of our favorite superheroes are no different than the logos of our favorite football teams, Catwoman’s costume indistinguishable from Louis Vuitton’s magical monogram.

What is amusing to me is that these symbols have stepped out of the pages of books and have taken on power in the real world. Though they were never intended as trademarks by their creators, they are among the most powerful marks ever known. Just try and use the Superman symbol for your business and see how fast you get sued by DC Comics and whatever movie studio is contemplating the next installment in the series. In truth, these symbols have now become enshrined in our collective consciousness to such an extent that they are at least as famous as any other mark.

If you doubt that this is so, then riddle me this. Other than the cross, what symbol is more famous than the Superman logo?

Who Is Your Lawyer? » Arcana

Borrowing Genius

Related Posts:

Shakespeare Veritas

Related Posts:

Harry Potter and the Copyright Pirates

Related Posts:

Everlasting Trademarks

Related Posts:

Charlie Sheen and the Trademark Factory

Related Posts:

Live Nude Copyrights

Related Posts:

World Famous Trademarks

Related Posts: