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back to article No Dr No rights for Bond owners

The company behind the James Bond film franchise cannot stop another company from registering 'Dr No' as a trade mark because the film title is an indication of artistic, and not commercial, origin, an EU court has said. The Court of First Instance (CFI) in Brussels ruled on a trade mark dispute between Danjaq, the owner of …

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  1. The Indomitable Gall

    Glad to hear it.

    As far as I knew, the standing convention in most of the EU has always been that a series title can be a trademark, but not a film or episode title. Losing that to a new precedent would have been a disaster for the public domain.

    Just imagine if the original publisher of a book trademarked the title just before copyright expired: how would the public be able to exploit the now public domain work if they weren't allowed to use the title?

    As I understand it, US law, as always, is one stage of weird ahead of us. The original Wizard of Oz book (and Baum's own sequels) is out of copyright, but the world of Oz is a trademark. This means that Baum's books can be distributed for free, but no-one can write new books except the trademark holder.

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  2. lglethal Silver badge

    hmm not enough information

    Unfortunately there's not enough information in this article for me to have an impression of whether a) this was a correct ruling, or b) if this was just a "land grab" by the owners of the Bond franchise.

    Stating that the company made bags, clothing, hats and drinks doesnt really help. Were these bags, clothing, hats and drinks cashing in on the Dr No movie (and/or novel), even if doing so slyly? If they were then i would say that the ruling sets a very bad precedent and the bond owners have a legitimate case. However, if the bags, clothing, hats and drinks were nothing to do with the movie and no one looking at the products could possibly make a connection with the film then the courts ruled correctly in stopping yet another frivolous attempt at preventing free expression.

    Some more information about this would be nice...

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  3. Dogbyte
    Joke

    As Harry Enfield might put it...

    Oi, No, no! Oh no, No. No, no!

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Iglethal

    If you want more information, you should try looking for it instead of whining about the article not giving you enough info "to have an impression". It does, by the way. There's even enough for an opinion. Look at a few other articles. Do people here seem to need *any* information for an impression or opinion? Nope, just self-satisfied smugness, as evidenced by the increasing percentage of comments that are nothing more than attacks on how articles are written. Ask the court to see the evidence or something. Then you can form an impression. Hell, just look for one of the items in question. Is it that difficult?

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    CRAP RULING No Dr No rights for Bond owners’

    There goes the British Film Heritage - it is of course a bad ruling as DR NO has already been used to bring in money [trademark] and protected under copyright therefore Trademark protection therefore exists & Missions Productions application is an infringment of DR NO!

    The ruling actually says that they are a MEDIA PRODUCTION COMPANY [Gesellschaft für Film-, Fernseh- und Veranstaltungsproduktion mbH] they are of course going to use it to try and cash in on DR NO & James Bond etc. And they could counter sue any one in the EU including the House of James Bond who may want to say that it is theirs after the ruling date if it does go unchallenged.!

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  6. Dodgy Dave
    FAIL

    No sympathy for Danjaq

    So Danjaq are responsible for protecting the Bond brand, and they had something like 30 years to register 'Dr No' as a trademark themselves, before this other lot pitched up.

    What exactly do they do to keep busy during the week?

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