Tom & Jerry short films that debuted between 1940 and 1957. Movie posters and lobby cards for these short films also were distributed without the requisite copyright notice. As a result, Warner Bros. concedes that it has no registered federal copyrights in the publicity materials themselves.[1]
AVELA has acquired restored versions of the movie posters and lobby cards for The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, and several Tom & Jerry short films. From these publicity materials, AVELA has extracted the images of famous characters from the films, including Dorothy, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz; Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind; and the eponymous Tom and Jerry. AVELA licenses the extracted images for use on items such as shirts, lunch boxes, music box lids, and playing cards, and as models for three-dimensional figurines such as statuettes, busts, figurines inside water globes, and action figures. In many cases, AVELA has modified the images, such as by adding a character’s signature phrase from the movie to an image modeled on that character’s publicity photograph. In other cases, AVELA has combined images extracted from different items of publicity material into a single product. In one example, a publicity photograph of Dorothy posed with Scarecrow serves as the model for a statuette and another publicity photograph of the “yellow brick road” serves as the model for the base of that same statuette.
Warner Bros. sued AVELA, claiming that such use of the extracted images infringes the copyrights for the films. Warner Bros. also asserted claims of, interalia, trademark infringement and unfair competition. AVELA contended that the distribution of the publicity materials without copyright notice had injected them into the public domain, thus precluding any restrictions on their use. On cross-motions for
summary judgment, the district court granted summary judgment to Warner Bros. on
- ↑ Some of the still photographs for The Wizard of Oz and a few of the movie posters for the Tom & Jerry films complied with copyright notice provisions, but those copyrights were not timely renewed.
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