Say for the moment you were a supervillain

[james_davis_nicoll]

And you wanted to screw with the competition by claiming 'super-villain','super-villainy' and associated concepts and practices for your own; which IP law angle is best?

Comments

[legionseagle]

Oddly enough, I considered super-villains and IP here, with reference to the inability to claim the privilege against self-incrimination in the context of the Senior Courts Act 1981 where an intellectual property right was in issue. I suggested there (with reference the case of Blofeld v. Moriaty that passing-off would be the most applicable remedy, with the super-villain in question alleging that the words in question had acquired a secondary meaning capable of distinguishing his goods and services from those of the competition (tort first established in the "Camel Hair belting" case where even belting made of camel hair was alleged to infringe the claimant's rights in the name "Camel Hair belting"; refined in Office Cleaning Services and in the advocaat line of cases).

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

clearly a question for lawandthemultiverse.com

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Those guys are always an entertaining and informative read!

[chomiji]

Do you know whether there's an LJ feed for those guys? That looks fascinating!

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Yes, there is: lawmultiverse, I believe...?

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

None; that's all too vague.

Trademarks for specific names -- The Joker®, for example.

Method patents for specific crimes -- but doing so would, by necessity, publish them.

Trade secret suits against your minions and henchmen who inevitably and futilely betray you.

Oh! And perhaps restraint of trade against the superheroes.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of the Witless Minions in Empowered; they had an unconventional but profitable business plan, until they encountered a problem for which they were unprepared.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Trademark.

OK, OK, you wouldn't be able to get your techniques trademarked, but patenting would require too much disclosure of your secrets; copyright has the Short Words and Phrases doctrine...and most importantly, both of those expire. Since you're going to live forever, being a supervillain, best to have a protection form that you can renew infinitely.

Trade secrets probably won't protect you when it comes to the techniques. I suppose if you broadly patented supervillainy and then, having tortured a few pharma lawyers, figured out how they prolong their patents so much, used those...that would get close.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

Except that you can't trademark common phrases, or concepts or practices...

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Sure you can--most trademarks are common phrases, just with context. "Delta," for example, is a common phrase, a word meaning "area at the mouth of a river," not to mention "triangle" and "the fourth Greek letter," but "Delta" is a trademark for both faucets and airlines. Among others, no doubt.

The issues with trademarks are context, as discussed; but then, once you're within a context, you have to look at descriptiveness, and genericness. You can't trademark a phrase that is generic (which is usually something like "Aspirin," which actually lost a trademark status as people began to use it to refer to the entire field), nor can you trademark one that is merely a simple description of the item ("Battery" brand batteries, maybe)--unless you can show that there is some additional, secondary or specific meaning to the phrase that's particular to whatever context you are getting the trademark in.

DC and Marvel, for example, have a joint trademark in the term "Super Hero." (While its actual legal status is in a certain amount of flux, having never been fully tested in court, it does appear to be on the books.) That's because, despite that "super hero" seems a common phrase, it has a specific secondary meaning in the context of comic books. So, in our world, "super-villain" would probably have the same semi-status. In the world James is envisioning, well, that would depend, wouldn't it?

You're right about concepts and practices though.

Completely tangential digression

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Aspirin is a fascinating, but not entirely apt, example. The name is still trademarked in many countries, but lost trademark status in certain select markets as part of war reparations after WWI. So in thus particular case, common usage was not relevant.

[a-neonta.livejournal.com]

You can sure try, though. (See Monster Cable, for example.)

[msss.livejournal.com]

Trademark for the branding, patents/trade secrets for the techniques, depending on whether they'd become obvious on use.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Trademark seems most plausible, but it would have to be a new version e.g. *S*U*P*E*R*V*I*L*L*A*I*N* - even then, it seems a bit iffy. Especially since supervillains aren't exactly noted for _obeying_ things like copyright, trademark, etc.

[bright-lilim.livejournal.com]

If I were a supervillain taking over the world, I would trademark "Superhero" for myself. Or "The most amazing Superhero in the world".

Dr Impossible's inventions

[disassembly_rsn]

Here's something that doesn't sound quite like what you were going for, but that I thought was glossed over a bit in SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE.

I seem to recall that somewhere in the text it was mentioned that the Champions (that is, the superhero team) had seized and were profiting from Dr Impossible's robotics work. (That may have been specific to Blackwolf; I'm not sure.) Now granted, Dr Impossible is a supervillain and has spent quite a bit of time in prison, but I don't see that that should result in his intellectual property being free to the Champions. Impossible should have thought of this, too; one of his old schemes involved IMPOSSIBLE INDUSTRIES LLC, although I don't think we learned the details of that one.

So, to come to the point: the robotics work and other devices that Impossible developed for his various schemes should be subject to patents and such, and he should have been able to take some chunks out of the Champions' corporate hide for stealing them. After all, Impossible was already in jail; what did he have to lose by admitting in court that he'd developed such-and-such a doomsday device and associated technology?

Re: Dr Impossible's inventions

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that part always struck me as a bit dickish on Blackwolf's part. On the other hand, it was in the part where all the heroes are leveling up/cashing in experience points, so he had to get something out of it.

If memory serves, Dr. Impossible mentions at some point that he's technically a sovereign nation. That being the case, I'm not sure that international laws like the Berne Convention (copyrights, not patents, I know) apply to him unless he himself is a signatory on the relevant agreements. Is there a Berne equivalent for patents?

[barberio.livejournal.com]

Taking copyright of legislation drafted on behalf of politicians by your lobbyists, and restricting publication of those laws. Oh, you mean fictional supervillians, not the faceless corporations that already do that.

[miramon.livejournal.com]

In the US, I would have thought a business methods patent would be best. You just patent something vague like "holding a city or nation to ransom by means of a concealed device". The US Patent Office automatically grants it and there you are. You don't actually give away anything useful. Of course this doesn't work anywhere else.

[hattifattener]

Yeah, this. I guess they're a little shaky legally, but a supervillain would have sufficient lawyers.

[seawasp]

Let me get this straight: You want to come up with a law-based method to harrass and constrain other people whose methods of operation are almost entirely extra-legal, and who if sufficiently annoyed will resort to Mad Plans to Destroy the World(TM) in order to deal with the annoyance.

Yeah. Good luck with that. Me and the other superheroes will just stand back here and watch.

These would be lawful evil supervillains?

[ms-danson.livejournal.com]

Patent trolling (in the US, Canada has laws that make it less profitable). Get rights to as many broad and/or vaguely worded patents to things that might possibly read on your competition's inventions, tools, and actions, then wait for them to do something, have something, or make something that infringes on one of your patents and sue the hell out of them. Or just threaten to sue unless they give you 1 MILLION DOLLARS!!11!!! (seriously, ask for more than that).

In Canada, this isn't as easy. We have rules that mean that you can't just sit on a patent doing nothing with it if someone else wants to do something with it. Our competition laws can require that the patent owner license the patent in cases like that.

[grimjim.livejournal.com]

Trade secrets are security via obscurity. Once the secret is leaked, game over.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret#Protection

A company can protect its confidential information through non-compete and non-disclosure contracts with its employees (within the constraints of employment law, including only restraint that is reasonable in geographic and time scope). The law of protection of confidential information effectively allows a perpetual monopoly in secret information - it does not expire as would a patent. The lack of formal protection, however, means that a third party is not prevented from independently duplicating and using the secret information once it is discovered.

The obvious twist would be for a superhero outfit to hire a firm in, say, Shenzhen to reverse engineer supervillain technology.

[http://users.livejournal.com/krin_o_o_/]

Don't bother... Come on, you're a super-villain, just KILL anybody who steals your schtick.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

In general, no matter how powerful the supervillain, the government is typically even bigger.

Alternately, if your target is a superhero, then the law is a very powerful thing to use. (See various episodes of The Venture Brothers.)

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

An army of zombie lawyers who'll eat the competition's brains.