View this email in your browser

Life Doesn't Suck - and I Can Prove It

When I’m having a bad day, my brain sometimes falls into the abyss of “Everything sucks” and “I can’t do anything right.” When I get suck in these spiraling thoughts, I’m glad I have my jar.

This jar sits next to my bed with a little pad of paper and a pen. Whenever something good happens in my life, I write a little note about it, fold up the paper, and put it in my jar. At the end of the year, I dump out these memories and read through them to commemorate the last 12 months. It’s a wonderful way to wind down the year, and these memories come in handy when writing my Undeniable Recap.

When I have a really bad day, I take comfort in being able to look at my jar before I to sleep and see the visual reminder that everything doesn’t suck all the time.

Even Disney Loses Sometimes

Whenever I talk about intellectual property and fan art and fan fiction, my rule of thumb is “Don’t fuck with Disney.” They are fierce about protecting their intellectual property, and they have the means to fight a protracted legal battle.

Last week, a ruling came down on a motion in a case between Disney and Characters for Hire, a company that provides costumed characters for children’s parties. Apparently, Characters for Hire dresses its actors out in bad, unlicensed, “knock-off” costumes of Disney characters. They never use the Disney character’s name, so you can’t hire Chewbacca but you can get “Big Hairy Guy” to come to your kid’s party.

Disney (along with Marvel and Lucasfilms) sued for violations of their copyrights and trademarks, and they filed a motion for summary judgment, which is a motion asking the court rule on at least some of the claims in the case because there are no issues of fact for the court to decide. Surprisingly, the court ruled against Disney in part because there does not appear to be any confusion that Characters for Hire is not affiliated with Disney and there’s no likely damage to Disney’s reputation.

My read on this case so far is that the court said that Characters for Hire’s costumes are so bad that no adult who hires them will think that they have any relationship with the company that created the characters. The one claim that is proceeding is a trademark claim for dilution, which is Disney’s claim that these characters are harming their brands with their inferior costumes.

We’ll see what happens in this court case and whether it will have an impact on future cases involving fan art or fan fiction. This case may create a precedent that creating your own works (even commercially) is legal as long as the quality of your work is so inferior that no one would think that they’re buying brand-authorized products.

Hey Ruth – I Have a Question

I’ve created something special just for this list. You get exclusive access to me to ask any question you want: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6LBLGXF.

This is the place for you to ask any questions or tell me anything you want, and I could be use your submission in an upcoming blog post, question of the day video, or in a future edition of this newsletter. I’m recording my next batch of videos this week, and I’m answering all the questions you’ve submitted since the last edition of this newsletter.

This survey is only available to this list. Thanks to everyone who contributed. I hope you find my responses helpful.

Onward and upward!
Ruth