Audio Video News

Are intellectual property attorneys required to have their senses of humor surgically removed? It often seems that way.

New Line Cinema is the latest victim of over-zealous property protection. The film company has been slapped with a cease-and-desist order over its forthcoming installment in the popular Austin Powers spy spoof series. The problem? The film's tentative title, Goldmember, treads a little too close to Goldfinger, the 1964 movie and one of Ian Fleming's original James Bond stories.

MGM/UA and Danjaq, the British company that owns the Bond trademark, have obtained an injunction against New Line Cinema that may force the studio to change the film's title. The two companies have "a zero-tolerance policy towards anyone who tries to trade in on the James Bond franchise without authorization," according to an MGM spokesperson. New Line has responded to the legal pressure with a frenzied recall of all promotional materials containing the name Goldmember. New Line is attempting to resolve the dispute under guidelines established by the Motion Pictures Association of America, stated a New Line official. Until the issue is settled, the film will be referred to as "the third installment of Austin Powers," the studio announced.

New Line Cinema isn't the first studio to feel legal heat from MGM/UA and Danjaq. In 1997, the two partners successfully sued Sony Pictures Entertainment over a Bond film it was developing. It appears extremely unlikely that New Line might get away with simply changing the name to, say, Goldenrod. That's too close to Goldeneye, the 1995 Bond yarn starring Pierce Brosnan as the suave, indestructible secret agent.

Whatever the outcome, it won't be cheap for any of the litigants. The ludicrous Goldmember dispute is part of a much larger pattern of excessive litigation over such issues. Several years ago, Rounder Records released a CD by country singer Katy Moffatt entitled The Greatest Show on Earth. Rounder was quickly slapped with a lawsuit by attorneys for Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey for trademark violation, because the album's title legally belonged to the circus. No sane person would have confused the disc with a Ringling Brothers production, yet Rounder had to recall thousands of CDs.

It gets worse. In a story titled "Righting Copywrongs" in the January 21 issue of The New Yorker, James Surowiecki details some of the excesses that have been perpetrated against innocent and sometimes defenseless people. Among them: action by the Walt Disney Company against some day-care centers in Florida that had "crude murals of Mickey and Goofy on their walls." Surowiecki also mentions a 1995 effort by ASCAP "to get summer camps to pay licensing fees for the songs the kids sang around the campfire." Think about that the next time some bright-eyed student says he wants to go to law school.