July 22, 2004

Hungry Eyes

I haven't taken copyright yet. I've only prepared the filing for one U.S. copyright, and turns out, it's just a fill-in-the-blank type form, so I didn't learn very much from that assignment.

I'm vaguely aware that useful artistic works can be copyrighted, but I'm not very clear on when you'd want to file a design patent versus a copyright (except that the copyright is much easier and cheaper to file).

So, as an educational exercise, I read the 7th Circuit's recent opinion on the copyright of a mannequin head, Pivot Point International Inc. v. Charlene Products Inc. (No. 1-3888).

Am I the only one who finds this sentence hilarious?

In the mid-1980's Passage [the hair designer who founded Pivot Point] desired to develop a mannequin that would imitate the "hungry look" of high-fashion runway models.

I thought not.

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