Honestly, this type of shitty control over IP is getting extremely out of hand. Companies nowadays earn the "right" to an IP and can pretty much get away with anything there. Mr. Lambert here is an actor... Sony can't own his "face" or his "acting".. but they own the IP to "Kevin Butler"? The whole system is just broken.
Here's a video of Kevin Butler being edited out... by the way, all the videos of the original commercial has vanished from youtube as far as I can tell.
Patent for the iphone is even worse. Did you know that they patented the Round corners of a rectangular device? They also patented the Slide to unlock... This is some bullcrap...
Update: GamesBeat contacted Sony and the publisher’s senior director of corporate communications Dan Race sent us the following statement:
Sony Computer Entertainment America filed a lawsuit against Bridgestone and Wildcat Creek, Inc. on September 11. The claims are based on violations of the Lanham Act, misappropriation, breach of contract and tortious interference with a contractual relationship. We invested significant resources in bringing the Kevin Butler character to life and he’s become an iconic personality directly associated with PlayStation products over the years. Use of the Kevin Butler character to sell products other than those from PlayStation misappropriates Sony’s intellectual property, creates confusion in the market, and causes damage to Sony.
The case appears that it might be settled out of court.
I heard his contractor does he won't advertise with competitors in any way. He kinda broke that.
Well if his contract is like that, then he's kinda stuck. If this is true, he broke the contract. But a better perspective would be to say that the contract itself is broken to begin with.
Let's think for a moment... what does the "Kevin Butler" persona include? Does it include the name, or does it include the actor's preferences? In other words, where is its limitations? I can see this contract destroying the actor's career.
What's worse is that this story plays hauntingly similar to game studios and publishers - A Publisher buys the rights to a game studio's IP, the game studio finishes a few games and wants to move on, but the IP stays with the Publisher, and it gives the IP to another studio that doesn't know what to do with it. The new games of that franchise sucks and the IP sits and collects dust. Overall, this whole practice of Intellectual Property has a lot of problems and I think Sony suing their actor highlights them very well.
Yeah I'm not a big fan of Westernhagen either, Fanta vier much better! But they didn't drop the lyrics that fit the situation. Farty: Ich bin wieder hier; nobody: in meinem Revier; Me: war nie wirklich weg
