Since we launched our Kickstarter, a few people have raised questions about the possible copyright issues involved with our project. Since LEGO® and Star Wars™ are obviously copyrighted, these are valid concerns. However, we have checked and double checked many times with many different professionals, and we are completely within our legal bounds to make a show of this type, and here's why.
According to www.copyright.gov, "Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture." When something is copyrighted, you cannot reproduce, distribute or sell it without the permission of the owner. However, copyright does not protect working products such as a car, or a suitcase. These are protected by patent law. According to the Wikipedia entry on patents, "a patent provides the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the patented invention". However, you can show a patented object in a film. Obviously, a movie can show a car or a suitcase without permission from the patent owner. In the same way, we can show a brick or figure made by LEGO®.
As for LucasFilm™ and Star Wars™, we are not actually using anything owned by LucasFilm™. All of the names, characters, places, and events we use in Clone Training Center are original, and therefore, not owned by LucasFilm™. They do own the rights to the Star Wars™ films and everything associated with them, but this is an original story and never once references anything from the films by name.
Lastly, we have been very careful to make clear that our show is not sponsored or endorsed by LEGO® Group of companies, or LucasFilm™. On their website LEGO® says, "A disclaimer should be used when the LEGO trademark appears on a Web page. An appropriate disclaimer would be 'LEGO®is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this site'". As you can see at the bottom of this post, we put a similar disclaimer on everything we do, in compliance with their guidelines.
UPDATE: We are also currently working with an attorney to do one last round of checks through everything to make sure we haven't missed anything.
If you have any further questions about our show, feel free to contact us at CloneTrainingCenter@gmail.com
LEGO® and Star Wars™ are the properties of LEGO® Group of companies and LucasFilm™ respectively. Neither endorses or sponsors this blog, the show mentioned in this post or any of its creators or affiliates.
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