Chessrook44 said:
DVS BSTrD said:
Except for the fact that the game was released BEFORE the copywrite was even filed.
This reminds me of another semi-famous instance that was similar. Bill Waterson was the creator and owner of Calvin and Hobbes, and was against doing any sort of merchandising aside from one or two calendars and a few collection books. Well some people made those Calvin Peeing stickers you occasionally see on truck windows or the like. Bill copyrighted Calvin and Hobbes, but by then, it was too late. The judge ruled against him, saying that "Well you should have copyrighted sooner." And that's kinda what's happening here. WB used the images, the cat owners copyrighted them after, and most likely a judge will say "Well, you're kinda too late here."
This is compared to when WB has videos copyrighted, and then goes after people who post that copyrighted material after it was copyrighted. Unfortunately, it seems like WB might end up on top here, and they'll just have a big grin on their face that they got away with it.
"Don't steal everything from the internet. Just steal what hasn't been copyrighted yet. They can't prosecute us for that."
Well, a lot of it comes down to what state you fight it in, as there are differant laws and standards in differant places. California is generally the most friendly to big business and copyrights (ironic given that it's a liberal bastion), which is why most EULAs and such require you to pursue legal action in California and using it's court system as opposed to being able to act against them in your own state's court system where beating them might be easier.
It should also be noted that you can retroactively copyright and trademark things, if you can prove that you had it first, and then force someone to cease and desist using your material, pay damages, and similar things. This is why you generally don't see more cases of companies prowling around looking for things that aren't copyrighted or protected and snapping them up. It happened here, but it stands out to an extent because you don't see it every day.
I know a bit more about criminal law than civil law of course, but as I said, jurisdiction matters, as does how good your lawyers are.
I also seem to remember that the picture of Calvin peeing was defended by it being "Bad Boy" and not Calvin, and there are enough subtle differances to diffeentiate the two on a technical level. This is why none of them are marked as being "Calvin and Hobbes". I might be remembering it wrong but I seem to remember this came with a borderline insult in claiming that the artwork for Calvin was generic enough to be impossible to copyright in outline form.
While it's a very long time ago, I seem to remember a similar case where there was a battle between the guys that did the video game "Lemmings" and the creators of "Fraggle Rock" which wound up favoring the game creators due to the generic nature of the basic "Fraggle" appearance. I don't remember that one too well though, but I do seem to remember it coming up.
The basic situation being one where the law prevents someone from being too broad with an artistic copyright, preventing say stick figures, smiley faces, etc... from being copyrighted, and this can be applied to a lot of other very basic patterns or outlines.
To be honest in the scope of this case I'm not 100% sure if Keyboard Cat could be defended as a cat sitting at a keyboard is a pretty generic image, and something people have been joking around about since pretty much the first feline jumped on someone's keyboard (probably the owner of the very first personal computer). Nyan Cat on the other hand is distinctive enough where there might be a case.
Of course in both cases I'd imagine one of the first things the courts are going to look at is how the popularity of both "cats" exists because of people using them throughout the internet as memes. The creators were not enforcing the copyright/trademark and that could be a problem. Being forced to defend your work is one of the reasons for the hyper-aggession you see from some corperations and their lawyers... leading to cases like how Bethesda's lawyers went after Notch for "Scrolls", allegedly without Bethesda itself and it's design team being involved or at the helm.
It will be interesting, and I do kind of hope to see big business take a hit, but the law has to be fairly universal, and to be honest both "Keyboard Cat" and "Nyan Cat" have been in public use long enough where on a lot of level this seems a lot like Tim Langsdell trolling over copyrighting the word "Edge" and so on. Our kitty creators didn't get involved until a big enough company was involved, and to be fair, probably smelled a payday.