| "The Oscar Cops" |
November 2009 "Academy Bullies Fan and Collector" From the firm who boasts " Lady Justice may be Blind but she sees it our way more than 90% of the time." It seems I am now in the cross hairs of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Quinn Emanuel (General Counsel to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences) pertaining to an item I purchased on ebay about 9 months ago. I purchased an Oscar like statuette from an eBay seller, a noted Hollywood film make-up artist of the 1980's. This item was a very realistic replica of an Academy Award, the major difference being it was not to scale. I am a fan of the Academy Awards and purchased the item as I collect Academy Awards Memorabilia. Recently I decided to re-sell the item given the current economy as I could honestly use the money more the the statuette. Since I had purchased this item from ebay 9 months earlier with no issues, disclosures or other I reasonably thought I could re-sell the item in the same market place from which it came. Several days after listing the item on eBay my item was removed by ebay citing a Vero auction violation (violation claim by a copyright holder). I of course respected the removal of the item from ebay and ceased any attempt at selling the item. A day after the item was removed from ebay I received a letter via email from David Quinto of Quinn Emanuel. **Quinn Emanuel Letter PDF I promptly responded to the email from Quinn Emanuel with a full explanation of the items origin explaining how I came to possess it. Including that I am simply a fan and in no way intended to commercially profit from the Oscar likeness. I further included in my response I would refrain from any attempts at future sales of this item. Two weeks later I received the following reply to my email. Dear Mr. Nyhus: The Academy thanks you for your prompt response and your agreement to refrain from any future attempts to auction, sell or otherwise transfer items that infringe on the Academy’s intellectual property rights. Before the Academy may consider this matter fully resolved, however, it must again request that you provide it with the contact information for Mr. XXXX as well as all records of your transaction with him concerning the Statue, including but not limited to proof of payment to Mr. XXXX. Finally, the Academy must again request that you immediately deliver up the Statue to the Academy for destruction. You may deliver the statue to my office, located at 865 South Figueroa St., 10th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90017. Please let us hear from you and receive the Statue no later than the close of business on November 30, 2009 so that we may finally bring this matter to a close. Best regards, David Quinto This is clearly a case of bully tactics; the Academy knows I do not have the resources to stand up to them on principal in this matter. I am a working class fan of the Academy not a manufacturer of faux statuettes, these actions seem very heavy handed and unfair. A very wealthy power house organization is asking me to forfeit an item I legally purchased at a complete monetary loss. If the policing of the Academy’s owner rights pertaining to eBay auctions were fair and consistent I would have never been able to legally purchase this statue to begin with. Not to mention there appears to be a deceptive attempt at the Academy trying to compel me to out the seller by demanding I provide the sellers information which I do not have. **Interesting note: In 2007 a website Oscarwatch.com was sued by the Academy for trademark infringement among other things. In a letter leading up to the suit dated February 2nd 2007 from Academy Executive Director Bruce Davis to Sasha Stone who was the webmaster of Oscarwatch.com, Mr. Davis addresses the Academy's position on trademarks. Mr Davis emphasized in his letter pertaining to the Academy's trademark "As you may know, trademarks can't be enforced selectively." Really...Mr. Davis? ** Davis Letter The Academy advised me in their complaint; "Your advertisement on e-Bay acknowledges that the Statue is modeled on the Oscar. Indeed, you identify the Statue as an "Academy Awards - Oscar Replica - Movie Award. The auction and/or sale of the "Oscar" statuette likeness, or any statuette or depiction strikingly, substantially, or confusingly similar thereto, and the use of the Academy Awards and the Oscar word mark is unauthorized." On November 3rd a week prior to my incident the following item was listed and sold on eBay. eBay item #230392963261 Listing Title: CAST BRASS Oscar FAUX ACADEMY AWARD STATUE 7 3/4" TALL Item Description: This statuette is about 7 3/4" tall including the base. It is a cast brass replica of an "Oscar" Academy Award. Item ran the full course of auction selling for $61.00. On November 24th two weeks after my incident the following item was listed and sold on eBay. eBay item #160380915630 Listing Title: OSCAR AWARD STATUE STATUETTE REPLICA Item ran the full course of auction selling for $120.00 (Pictured above) My eBay item's listing title was, Academy Awards - Oscar Replica Statue - Movie Award. (Pictured) These are two of the best examples, this is not to mention the numerous current listings on eBay that violate the Academy's claim. However according to the Academy's own Executive Director "trademarks can't be enforced selectively." My Question to Mr. Davis is this: Then why am I in light of current and past auctions being selectively asked to hand over my item or face legal action? To be continued..... I am pretty sure I have located the source material for the movie "The Firm". "Bringing Down The House" Copyright Infringement Lawsuit (v. Disney,Queen Latifah,Jason Filardi..) Other Oscar related legal Actions NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY MARCH 22, 1998 Scott Miller - Assistant Counsel Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Legal Counsel Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges LLP Scott Miller has won hundreds of Oscars, all of them in court. As Legal Rights Coordinator for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars tomorrow night, Miller enforces the Byzantine rule book that dictates legal use of the statuette's name and image. The rule manual is tremendous, roughly the size of a Bible, moans one studio adman, who struggles with its many edicts. For example: the commandment that only Best Picture-winning films can have Oscar's image on videocassette packages, a single, preapproved likeness no taller than an inch. The job also includes challenging and repossessing forbidden images -- the six-footer pictured alongside Miller was used at a New York State restaurant called Oscars -- and sending hundreds of crabby letters every year, as warnings to scofflaws. Transgressors include high-school prom committees and various types of counterfeiters. Miller has even succeeded in taking down a few phony Oscars that barely resemble Oscar, like the one he calls Casper, because its oversize head and wide hips resembled the friendly ghost. He was a little dumpy,'' Miller says. ''He needed to go to a gym. The Oscar enforcers were almost defanged in 1991 when a California district court judge cleared a novelty company, Creative House Promotions in Elk Grove Village, Ill., to manufacture fakes with designations like World's Greatest Dad. But that was subsequently crushed in appeals court. It must have been crushed hard. A nervous spokesman at Creative House, who would identify himself only as Mike, said the controversy involved the old owner. Who was the old owner? I'd rather not say his name, the spokesman stammered. Miller doesn't mind a bit if companies like Creative House see him as a bully. With a laugh he says, They brought it on themselves. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences General Counsel is that of the mega law firm of Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart and Hedges. In 2007 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sued AMPAS.COM. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences vs. AMPAS.COM In 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the host of the Oscars) sued Sasha Stone, operator of Oscarwatch.com. Launched in 1998, Oscarwatch.com was a website featuring blog commentary, predictions, analysis, a forum, and contests relating to the Oscars. The complaint included claims for federal trademark infringement and dilution, unfair competition, and violation of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, all relating to Stone's registration and use of the "oscarwatch.com" domain name. The parties settled soon after the lawsuit was filed, and Stone changed the name of his site to "Awards Daily" and his domain name to "http://www.awardsdaily.com/". According to Stone, the Academy never objected to his coverage of the Oscars, only to the use of its trademark in the domain name. The academy goes to great lengths to protect its brand. By Paul Young, Special to The Times February 21, 2007 Even if your first name happens to be Oscar, you might want to rethink using it on your blog, website or any product you may be about to market. The folks who run the Academy Awards feel a certain possessiveness about their golden statuette of the same name, and they're not afraid to pull rank. Just recently, the long-running information and trivia site Oscarwatch.com was forced to change its name under threat of being shut down. But it's not just the rise of the Internet that has the academy protecting its name and image. For the better part of the last 70 years, entrepreneurs have tried to appropriate the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's most cherished brand — the Oscar — for commercial products. That has put the academy in the position of trying to bolster its symbolic value and stave off what has become an incessant wave of trademark infringements. "It happens all the time," said Bruce Davis, executive director of the academy. "I think we see a new board game each year where the pieces are little Oscar statuettes." As a result, even the most innocuous products — an "Academy Award" deli sandwich, say, or the Academy Award tailoring shop — have been squeezed by the film academy's muscle. In 1996, Frank Sheftel, a chocolatier in North Hollywood, made headlines when his company produced chocolate Oscar figurines for academy member Mark Canton, who was then president of Sony Pictures. According to Sheftel, Canton ordered the chocolates for a private party, yet when the academy got wind of the agreement, it slapped Sheftel with a federal copyright infringement lawsuit. "I decided to fight it," Sheftel said. "And that led to a lot of negative publicity for the academy, so they decided to settle." Sheftel wasn't alone; he said that dozens of candy companies were producing similar edible Oscar figurines at the time. Sheftel said he purchased his mold from a catalog, which was one of many available to wholesalers. And the name game continues. A Google search reveals that there are more than a dozen companies that use some form of the academy's name to make products. South Carolina-based Academy Awards Inc. makes signs, banners and flags, while L.A.-based Academy Award Clothes Inc. has been distributing garments with that label since 1950. Will the academy go after them? "You don't have to sue them all," Davis said, "but you have to at least write them a letter stating that we are aware of the misappropriation and, if it continues, a lawsuit will be forthcoming." The academy was a very hand-to-mouth organization at the time," said Davis of the choice to leverage Oscar. "And all that money went to paying off its headquarters, which was then on Melrose. But more importantly, the license with Bulova meant that it would be in Bulova's best interest to fight off infringements with its own legal department, which was significantly larger than the academy's. So they believed that this would finally put an end to all the illegal products out there." But when the company began running ads touting that its Academy Award watch had a "winning" design, the academy charged it with "perpetrating a fraud" on the public. Arguing that Oscar's symbolic value had been diminished because people would assume that Bulova had earned an Oscar for "best watch design," the academy aligned with the Federal Trade Commission to break its contract with the company two years early. (Some of those watches now appear on EBay selling for as much as $2,500.) |
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| eBay item #160380915630 Sold November 24th, 2009 |
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| My Item removed from eBay November 10th, 2009 |