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At a rummage sale a few years ago, I bought a book published by Disney in the 1960s or 1970s which had instructions on how to make Mickey Mouse puppets. It als
by OrangeMango 6y ago
At a rummage sale a few years ago, I bought a book published by Disney in the 1960s or 1970s which had instructions on how to make Mickey Mouse puppets. It also said to "have fun" making them. Selling things for a profit is a lot of fun.
As far as I'm concerned, I now have a perpetual, transferable license to make and sell Mickey Mouse puppets. I even asked a lawyer.
- londons_explore 6y agoI'm not sure that would pass the "meeting of minds" test of contract law...
- NullPrefix 6y agoMore like "changing of the minds"
- ballenf 6y agoThat book isn't an example of a contract, unlike the crazy Disney tweet. The book terms form a license. Backed by the purchase price of the book. Disney's likely argument is that only original purchasers of the book are covered by the license, that non-transferability was implied.
- OrangeMango 6y agoYeah, so my thought when I bought it was to offer to sell it back to Disney for $25k or something. I could most likely get a pro-bono defense while Disney would pay a lot more than that in a lawsuit which I would most likely win. Most likely. I still haven't acted on it yet.
- lifeisstillgood 6y agoI could fly to Moscow and defeat the Russia Mafia in unarmed combat. Or I could blackmail Disney in a lawsuit. The Russian Mafia think my chances better beating them than Disney.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- JackFr 6y agoYou won’t win. The marginal cost to Disney of suing you is close enough to $0 that it’s not worth mentioning. Further the likelihood of a lawyer representing you pro bono in an unwinnable nuisance suit is much lower than you imagine.
- HenryBemis 6y agoDisney is a money printing machine. All they have to do is make another "Marvelous" movie or a "Space Fights" movie (yes that's XKCD) and that will add some more billions to their coffers. They got enough money to be dragging you to courts for another century. No pro-bono lasts that long.
- ddrdrck_ 6y agoPlease do ! This would make an interesting case to study and you would certainly become famous. I would not be as confident as you that you'd be likely to win though ...
- gumby 6y agoLuckily US still has a first sale doctrine. Perhaps after you pass the book on you have to stop making puppets though.
- qubex 6y agoThat’s interesting, though... does that mean that in your understanding of the scenario (IANAL, you might or may not be) the original buyer might have a shot at making that argument?
- tzs 6y agoSo this license granted the purchaser permission to use Disney IP in exchange for the purchase price of the book...how is that different from a contract? The distinction between a contract and a license is a lot smaller than most people in software seem to think it is [1]. [1] https://www.technollama.co.uk/a-licence-or-a-contract https://www.technollama.co.uk/a-licence-or-a-contract
- ncmncm 6y agoA license is different from a contract because there is a separate body of law for licenses and another for contracts, with different requirements. A contract can involve a license, and a license can involve a contract, explicitly. But they are different things. You need a lawyer to explain precisely how they are different, and how they interact. (Many judges and many lawyers are not very clear on license law.) But one important difference is that there is no need for mutual agreement or exchange of value, in license law. If you don't agree, you don't have the license. You start out bound by its restrictions, under the Law of the Land, and they are only relaxed by its owner choosing to relax them.
- gamblor956 6y agoLicenses are a type of contract, (like a square is a type of quadrilateral). Contract law applies to all licenses, but IP licensing law does not apply to all contracts.
- skissane 6y agoNot all licenses are contracts. Some are deeds instead. ("Contracts" and "deeds" are different – contracts require consideration, deeds don't – a deed can be completely one-sided; deeds have far stricter formality requirements than contracts.) There may also be cases of licenses which are neither contracts nor deeds – such as the concept of a "license by estoppel".
- ncmncm 6y agoWhat he said. The GPL, e.g., is not a contract. It says so right in it, for the benefit of those confused (including, as I noted, many lawyers and even judges). A contract that has not been affirmed by exchange of consideration and at least implied consent is void. Licenses, as I have been told, may be entirely one-sided, and need not depend on explicit actions by either party. They are different, neither a superset nor a subset of contracts. There is, however, a bunch of cracked case law around licenses created by jurists confused about the topic. I am no lawyer.
- TimTheTinker 6y agoThis wouldn't fall under contract law - it's more like an implicit license grant.
- warent 6y agoSelling and making are two different things
- ballenf 6y agoNot if making money is fun for you.
- rsp1984 6y agoMaking puppets != making money
- warent 6y agoWhat if you can only have fun making the puppets while simultaneously murdering someone? Following your logic, Disney endorses murder. Complete nonsense.
- loeg 6y agoIf there was money in it, Disney would absolutely endorse murder.
- DangitBobby 6y agoThat's silly. Making money is not illegal. A contract simply cannot permit something that is illegal, such as murder.
- HenryBemis 6y agoFrogpelt kinda touched this. You can take some creative licenses for example. Feel free to use "that photo" or "that sound" but not for profit. BBC let free their sound library, and you can use any clip you want, except not for profit.
- icebraining 6y agoRight, but that's explicit in the license. On the other hand, it's broadly accepted that you can sell stuff that includes BSD-licensed works, despite the BSD license not explicitly saying you can.
- amelius 6y agoThis reminds me of a book called "numerical recipes in C", full of algorithms that were very useful except you couldn't really use them because the authors protected their use with a very restrictive license.
- jarekkruk 6y agoOn the other hand I haven't seen red black tree implementation that isn't based on Cormen (in most cases quoted).
- martincmartin 6y agoYou could use the algorithms, just not their implementation of the algorithms. If you rewrote it from scratch, following their text (not their source code), you were fully allowed to use it.
- hackinthebochs 6y agoI'm curious how this works in the case of reinvention. Some algorithms are so simple that there is basically one canonical way of writing it. I'm assuming copyright doesn't cover the independent implementation in such cases?
- ww520 6y agoReinvention is ok in term of copyright. Patent would prohibit it.
- SteveNuts 6y agoWhat would happen if I patented "left pad" in a bunch of languages?
- thayne 6y agoit would be an invalid patent (or at least should be), because 1. There is prior art 2. it is obvious to a domain expert But given the US patent office's track record, I wouldn't be too surprised if you were able to get a patent. Just don't expect it to hold up in court.
- jiveturkey 6y agoyou do. what you don't have is a license to attach the words "Mickey Mouse" to your product.
- pvaldes 6y agoIs Mucky Moose already copyrighted? I'm not very good making puppets.
- alex_young 6y agoBy that reasoning you could use said puppets to press play on bootleg Disney movies shown to theater audiences and claim that was fun, right?
- sizzle 6y agoThat sounds like an awesome relic, got any pics or sharing the title of the book if you don't mind? Would love to see what the puppets look like in all their hand-crafted glory..
- pnw_hazor 6y agoWell-developed (highly-litigated) areas of law don't work this way. A phrase in children's book is unlikely to be considered sufficient evidence that Disney has conveyed an unlimited license to sell Mickey puppets. At best, the language might protect an unsophisticated infringer from having to pay statutory damages or Disney's legal fees. For example, if a naive person (non-lawyer, non-business person) sold a few of the infringing puppets on Etsy, Disney would drop it (or a court would force Disney to drop the case, if needed) as long as the infringer promises to stop infringing. In contrast, a sophisticated infringer would be hung out to dry. Because sophisticated infringers cannot credibly suggest that they believe Disney has conveyed an unlimited right to make and sell Mickey puppets based on a phrase included in a children's book. Note, the words of a license or contract (including signatures if present) are taken as providing some amount of evidence of a license or contract. Contract docs memorialize an agreement between parties to enter into a contract. Formality requirements depend on the stakes, tradition, sophistication of the parties, etc. Most of this can vary widely depending on the industry or type of contract. Plus, in many cases, other statutes or regulations may come into play depending on the subject matter, type of agreement, duration of agreement, jurisdiction, and so on. Here, since conventional language or formalities that Disney normally uses when licensing its IP is absent, a court is likely to find no license grant or contract.
- sharemywin 6y agoCouldn't you show that they're willing to enter into a contract by hash tag, therefor they're pretty flexible on how they enter contracts. Or is it only the unconscionable ones?
- fnord123 6y agoIt accepts the Mouse's contractual conditions or it gets the copyright extensions again.
- jonplackett 6y agoAnything with a Disney logo on has Walt’s signature. I bet that book has it on some place.
- gamblor956 6y agoAs far as I'm concerned, I now have a perpetual, transferable license to make and sell Mickey Mouse puppets. I even asked a lawyer. That's not even remotely true. The plain language of the book says to have fun making them. It's irrelevant it you have fun selling them because that's an entirely separate act. Arguing that you have a perpetual and transferable license wouldn't just get you laughed out of court; you'd likely owe Disney their legal fees for making a bad faith legal argument.
- jppope 6y agoThe good news is that Mickey Mouse is about to be in the in the public domain. You can do whatever you want at that point.
- aidenn0 6y agoBut only if he's not wearing gloves!
- Waterluvian 6y agoYou could have a written consent from Walt. All that actually matters is your appetite to deal with an exhausting legal battle.