Stephen Fry defending The Hobbit Pub from Hollywood company's attack

Oh for goodness sake. Really, Hollywood? Really?

If Fry wants me to, I'm happy to send a letter.

Dear Lawyers

Fuck off.

Love and kisses,

Luke.

It's a great pub, I lived in Southampton for a couple of years and I loved the place. They've been The Hobbit longer than Hollywood has owned the rights I think, shouldn't the original books be out of copyright now anyway?
They'll need to remove the pictures used from the film I think, but the lawyers are ridiculous, they use a few names from the books and a few decorations but they aren't selling action dolls from the film or claiming to be an official sponsor or anything like that. Unfortunately there's no way the owners can fight a legal battle over it, they can't afford the kind of legal team that would get thrown at them. And good ol' Stephen, he is a legend.

BunnyMaz said:

Oh for goodness sake. Really, Hollywood? Really?

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In the age of MPAA and RIAA suing grannies for hundreds of thousands of dollars, yeah. Really.

Hollywood could have had a good time with this. AND good publicity. Instead, they're (typically, these days) opting to squeeze every last penny out of a brand. And that's all they see. A brand.

Because, hey, it's not like fans will boycott the movie over this.

Uh-oh. This doesn't look good for something else we've got where I live.


It would be really nice if people could just be cool about stuff. It's also easy to accuse Hollywood of just being dicks.

But isn't there also a facet of entities suing all known infringement because not doing so lessens the legal case against serious, major infringement when the time comes?

I had a boss who sued everyone she encountered, and she said she had to; otherwise, when she brought a serious case, it wouldn't hold up because she'd let so many other lesser incidents get away with it. If you don't enforce your trademarks, you lose them.

I'm not defending really... just a commentary on how our legal system encourages us to not just be nice.

I'm just wondering what Hollywood is going to do about all the streets named after characters and places in Tolkien's work. There are entire neighborhoods with Hobbit-themed street-naming schemes .

Pretty sure my favorite university wine and cheese bar, Bilbo & Gandalf's, went out of business back in the 70s or 80s. Guess we shouldn't hold our breath for a revival and re-opening .

I suspect heza is right that their selling of merchandise is what got them in grief.

I kind of feel that the Lord of the Rings is part of our cultural heritage. (But using images from the Peter Jackson films is cheeky.)

So the anthropologists won't have to find a new nickname for the fossil called the hobbit, as long as they stay away from merchandising?

Other than usage of material from the films, I think the hobbit horse got out of the barn a long, long time ago, no matter how much Hollywood might want to close that door now.

ETA: Guess the Hobbit Cafe in Houston should start watching over their shoulder. And Cafe Le Hobbit in Québec City. And Hobbits Café-Restaurant in Bondi Beach. And Bilbo Baggins Global Restaurant in Alexandria. And the Hobbit Restaurant in Ocean City. And the Hobbit House in Manila...

Kinda looks like they used at least some movie images: http://www.hobbitpub.co.uk/hobbit-cocktails/

Parametric said:

I kind of feel that the Lord of the Rings is part of our cultural heritage. (But using images from the Peter Jackson films is cheeky.)

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Yeah, it weakens the argument that they're not impinging on the the films if they've got Elijah Wood on the wall (pardon me) loyalty card.

Alessandra Kelley said:

Her Dark Star didn't say they were using images from the films, she said they're using names and decorations but not dolls from the film etc.

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A BBC article stated that they used images from the films on their loyalty cards.

Parametric said:

A BBC article stated that they used images from the films on their loyalty cards.

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That was pretty stupid.

Even though I think there's a good case for the names and place names from the books to have passed into general usage, I certainly would never say the same of anything from the movies.

DreamWeaver said:

That was pretty stupid.

Even though I think there's a good case for the names and place names from the books to have passed into general usage, I certainly would never say the same of anything from the movies.

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Yeah, for me, there's a big distinction. The books have been well loved for decades. The first movie didn't even come out until 2001. Plus I think Hollywood is entitled to protect its multi-million-dollar movie franchises, while they don't own the books.

DreamWeaver said:

ETA: Guess the Hobbit Cafe in Houston should start watching over their shoulder. And Cafe Le Hobbit in Québec City. And Hobbits Café-Restaurant in Bondi Beach. And Bilbo Baggins Global Restaurant in Alexandria. And the Hobbit Restaurant in Ocean City. And the Hobbit House in Manila...

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Shhhh! Darn you!

A charter captain I know was sued a few years ago because his boat was named Godzilla. Not sure which Hollywood entity went after him, but it was serious business. He couldn't afford to hire an attorney to defend himself and ended up changing the name of the boat to Podzilla. It sounds better anyway, since he often targets tarpon, which are known to travel in pods.

Alessandra Kelley said:

I wonder what would have happened if he had used the original transliteration of "Gojira."

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I believe there was an issue with this for the Sea Shepherd organization. (They have a reality show on Animal Planet called Whale Wars.) They didn't use Godzilla, but Gojira for the name of one of the boats. That still didn't fly, and they renamed it the Bridget Bardot.

Alessandra Kelley said:

No, definitely not. Public domain only applies to books written before, I think it's 1926 at the moment. The Hobbit was published in 1937. And the LOTR books are from the 1950s.

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In the UK, it's for 70 years after the death of the author, so it'll be a while yet.

heza said:

But isn't there also a facet of entities suing all known infringement because not doing so lessens the legal case against serious, major infringement when the time comes?

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One of my favourite ones was when Budweiser went after a small brewery in...Czechoslovakia? Anyway, turned out a small brewery had been in existence for many many MANY years before the US one (like several centuries) but trade marks etc hadn't been set. The US company lost and had to help market the beer in the US (under another name)

As for this - I saw it a few days ago. If they said 'Look, no film images, kk?' then I think that'd be fair. But otherwise, they just look like dicks. Because are they really losing any royalties/money from this pub doing what it's doing? Nope. They are getting free adverts though....

IdiotsRUs said:

As for this - I saw it a few days ago. If they said 'Look, no film images, kk?' then I think that'd be fair. But otherwise, they just look like dicks. Because are they really losing any royalties/money from this pub doing what it's doing? Nope. They are getting free adverts though....

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Actually, copyright/trademark doesn't just apply to people "taking" profits from you, it also applies to people making money you wouldn't normally make by attaching to something you own and not sharing the profit with you.

Remember the Juan Valdez guy? It wasn't that the coffee company was inhibiting his ability to make money with his likeness by using it, they just weren't compensating him for the use.

A pub using material owned by someone else (images from the movies) isn't stealing from the movie company's own pub business (since they don't have one, yet) but they are potentially making a profit from because of those materials and not giving the movie company a cut.

IdiotsRUs said:

...As for this - I saw it a few days ago. If they said 'Look, no film images, kk?' then I think that'd be fair. But otherwise, they just look like dicks. Because are they really losing any royalties/money from this pub doing what it's doing? Nope. They are getting free adverts though....

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The pub is using material that was illegally obtained to promote their brand, without permission from or compensation to the copyright holder. Surely that can't be deemed as acceptable?

In the example I gave above, the captain didn't realize that naming his boat Godzilla would be a form of copyright infringement. The boat had sailed for many years under that name before he was sued. When he asked for my opinion at the time, the first thing I told him was, "You'd better change the name of that boat."

He did, then wrote a letter of apology that settled the matter.