Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Oklahoma

Re: The legal use of the name Martin Luther King for a basketball tournament.

You can contact the Estate's IP manag6ement company at [email protected] or write them at:

Intellectual Properties Management

1579-F Monroe Drive, Suite 235

Atlanta, Georgia 30324

Be forewarned, they will want $$. I understand they wanted a license fee from the Memorial Fund raising money for the DC King memorial. Jeez.

Re: The legal use of the name Martin Luther King for a basketball tournament.

The family has rights to the name and likeness and would be the contact to give permission, likely for a licensing fee.

Re: The legal use of the name Martin Luther King for a basketball tournament.

You need a license to quote Martin Luther King Jr.

The King family, you see, holds a copyright on the 1963 speech along with most of MLK's papers, writings, and images.

Publish or use these without permission and you likely will find yourself receiving correspondence from the family's lawyers, which begins: "You have been sued in court."

USA Today discovered this when it reprinted the full text of the "I Have a Drea-" oops, I mean The Famous Speech On The Mall - and was sued for copyright infringement.

Gannett, which owns the paper, settled out of court for $1,700, plus legal fees.

CBS settled the case before it went to trial.

Even so, it's hard not to empathize with the King family.

Only the most hardened heart would begrudge King's survivors the licensing deal they have with Time Warner, which reaps them about $10 million a year.

Still, the complete commodification of a modern prophet is cheesy.

The family's vigorous enforcement of copyright protections and heavy restrictions on King's personal papers have driven away researchers, writers and scholars who either can't afford or who refuse to pay the royalties the family demands, according to a story published on CNN's Web site.

In a rare interview on the subject, Dexter King told The New York Times: "It has nothing to do with greed. It has to do with the principle if you make a dollar, I should make a dime."

But today, for a news network to broadcast much more than the old reliable touchy-feely snippets of the 16-minute speech, it will cost money, lest they violate the family's copyright privilege. You want more than a couple of stock lines from the speech? Licensing fees start at $2,000.

If King remains a one-dimensional grainy black-and-white figure who utters the same sunny sound bite year after year until it's a cliche, it's because news networks won't pay for more, and researchers have been kept from delving deep into his papers to tell us something new about the Martin Luther King the man, not the statuette.

And his family wants it that way.