Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Re: Copyright Questions

Hello,

I�ve great respect for anyone who can patiently stop motion animate anything. To answer your question, I'm proceeding on several assumptions. First: you are planning on using an unaltered Barbie doll. Second: Your use of the Barbie doll represents a good portion of your stop motion piece's runtime. Third: As you stated, you will be commercially marketing your piece. Using Barbie or even a Barbie lookalike will probably run afoul of Mattel�s copyright and trademark interests.

Unfortunately for your piece, Barbie Dolls are considered �sculptoral� works for copyright purposes. In other words, Barbie is copyrighted and she's got protection from a broad range of uses by non-copyright holders or licensees. Barbie also has trademark protection, which I won�t discuss, because her copyright protection is probably sufficient to keep her out of your film. Mattel has already shown its commitment to protecting Barbie through litigation, in its landmark case against the band Aqua for its �Barbie World� song lyrics.

Better to use a generic doll or to significantly alter the Barbie doll, making it unique enough to get around Mattel�s copyright. If Barbie is absolutely necessary for your story, there are several options that you might pursue. For example, you can modify the Barbie doll to openly mock Barbie for comic purposes, allowing you to claim that your doll is a �parody� of Barbie. However, special �exceptions� to copyright, like parody are hard to prove and will likely have to go to court for a judge to decide if the necessary standards are met. It is far easier to use a doll that is nothing like Barbie (or anyone else�s) to keep things safe.

I hope you found this helpful. If you have any other questions, or want to discuss this further, please feel free to give me or my office a call at 347-453-8099.

Kaiser Wahab, Esq.