Answer: ? Rocky IV: In Anderson v. Stallone, 11 U.S.P.Q. 2d 1161 (C.D. Cal. 1989), Anderson wrote a "treatment" called "Rocky IV" which he hoped would be turned into a sequel for Rocky III. In his work, previous characters such as Rocky Balboa, Adrian, Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang and Paulie were used and incorporated into a new story. The court held that this was a copyright violation in Stallone's characters since they were sufficiently delineated. In fact, it was held that "the Rocky characters are one of the most highly delineated group of characters in modern American cinema." Thus, the court had no problem ruling as a matter of law that the Rocky characters "are delineated so extensively that they are protected from bodily appropriation when taken as a group and transposed into a sequel by another author."

? TSR:

[Editors Note: Thank you to one of our readers, who writes that the discussion of TSR below is outdated. "When WOTC took over, things got drastically better, even more so with the addition of the open gaming license and d20. WOTC now encourages people to create and share things relating to their games, subject to certain very reasonable rules. They've even gone so far as to create official unoffical logos." With this caveat, we've left the entry below because it illustrates copyright issues in this area.]

TSR is the publisher of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ("AD&D"), a RPG generally played by creating "characters" to participate in a "story", written by the "game master." These games use a set of rules to arbitrate what the characters may reasonably do and are set in a fictional universe either created by the game master or provided by TSR. Thus, they publish "basic rules" which contain some measure of fiction (such as magic spells) and "game mechanics" (such as "1 game scale inch = 10 feet"). They also publish "game worlds", which contain maps, major characters, and other fictional elements, but do not contain any actual stories for the players to participate in. They also publish various "rules additions", supplements, blank forms to record information, and various other items. In addition, they also publish pre-written "stories" called "modules" that describe people, places, things, and events a group of "characters" might encounter while pursuing their goals. During game play, participants create blank forms, characters, magical items and new spells. The game master creates new worlds, monsters and important third party characters for the players to interact with. And they also create scenarios and records of the player's exploits. Generally gamers share these player-created materials which are often made freely available.

TSR has insisted that all these materials violate their copyrights. They have licensed a single ftp site to carry "approved" material, but required that the others remain closed and to include a disclaimer. Although TSR has not made any attempts to shut down various mailing lists that carry this material, nor have they prevented anyone for posting the material from the ftp sites to the Usenet newsgroup, it still remains to be answered whether their claims are valid. It does seem that parts of their claims are stronger than others, but in most descriptions, the "game mechanics" could easily be converted back into "real world" measurements. And much of the fictional material was published with the express intent of the purchaser creating these supplemental materials. It could be argued that the characters they publish are "stock" characters with little delineation. In fact, the entire point of a RPG is for gamers to delineate these characters. Further, blank forms would also likely be unprotected. The Copyright Office has promulgated a regulation prohibiting copyright in "[b]lank forms, such as time cards, graph paper, account books, diaries, blank checks, scorecards, address books, report forms, order forms, and the like, which are designed for recording information and do not in themselves convey information." 37. C.F.R. ?202.1(c).

? Tolkien's Middle-earth and languages: J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, created the paradigm of a fantasy world with such an elaborate history that is it is hard to imagine that this Middle-earth could be left unprotected by copyright. A quintessential example of FanFic, two young Russian women in the early 1990s wrote the Black Book of Arda, which retells the events of the Silmarillion from the perspective of the evil characters Melkor and Sauron. Unlike Trekkers and Star Wars enthusiasts, however, this type of FanFic is rare for Tolkien fans. Yet, another form of Tolkien FanFic does provide an extremely interesting copyright question whose answer is unknown.

In creating Middle-earth, Tolkien invented languages like Quenya and Sindarin with such detail that fans can actual learn them and write texts using them. This has spawned a whole breed of FanFic where authors write verses in these languages and inscribe them in Tolkien's calligraphy and publish them in literary magazines. Authors have even published manuscripts with dense analyses of Tolkien's texts and languages. This has caused Tolkien Estate Limited, the management of Tolkien's literary properties, to request such authors to cease and desist from publishing such texts. The essential question is: Can one copyright an invented language or just particular texts in that language? For many FanFic authors, it can be argued that a fair use exception should be allowed for such exceptionally obscure texts in an unknown journal for no profit. It is nonetheless important for FanFic authors to know the extent to which their actions could have legal ramifications.

? Distorted Barbies: Mark Napier, an innovative Web artist and culture critic, is the author of the site, The Distorted Barbie. "The site weaves text and visuals - including altered iterations of the famous face - into a pointed inquiry into the role of Barbie as an icon in modern life." As such, it is undoubtedly an example of a violation of Mattel's derivative right. Their reaction was to target Napier's ISP. Interport was sent a cease-and-desist letter, and subsequently, Napier received a similar letter which demanded that Napier remove the offending material. For more information, see Wired's "Cease and Desist Barbie" article in the "Related News" section.

Arguably, Napier's use of Barbie is a fair use. He is using Barbie for criticism of society and the distortion of Barbie into "fat," "ugly" and "mentally challenged" Barbies can be considered to be a parody. As a parody, Mattel could not argue that there was market harm in the market of distorted Barbies (since they would never make distorted Barbies). This use is apparently noncommercial and the use was minimal in the sense that it was used only to conjure up the image of Barbie necessary for a parody.

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