Courts

Warner Bros. Sued By A Mad Hatter

Ah, right then. Hmm... right! Okay, copyright infringement!

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Sorting

Quick: a company pays you to record your voice for a project. Do they own the right to use your recording for that project or do they own your recording, the right to reproduce it, and so on? That is a magical distinction, and what better to sharpen it than a Harry Potter case? Reuters has the story:

Warner Bros (WBD.O), opens new tab is facing a lawsuit from a British actor who voiced a toy version of the Sorting Hat from the “Harry Potter” series after the entertainment company allegedly misused his voice recordings.

Marc Silk’s company told the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, opens new tab on Wednesday that Warner infringed his copyrights by featuring his voice lines in other Potter-related toys, ads and attractions without paying him.

…

Silk told the court that he learned in 2021 that Warner had been using his recordings in other contexts, including in theme park attractions and different Sorting Hat toys. Silk said he had only given permission to use his voice in the original animatronic toy and accused Warner of infringing his copyrights.
Silk’s company asked the court for Warner’s profits from the use of his voice recordings and an order for the company to stop using them without his permission.

Who knew copy and pasting could be so expensive? The oddest thing about this, following the reasoning from the ScarJo AI voice debacle, is that it would have been fair game for Warner to commission someone to sound like Marc Silk’s “Sorting Hat” and avoided the legal trouble.

Could this whole thing have been avoided with a series of voice actors and separate sorting hats? Maybe — I’ll leave it up to the masterminds at Warner Bros. to figure out how to avoid this moving forward. If you can put your heads together and get The Dark Knight, you don’t need me coaching you on legal strategy.

Until the case settles, it would probably be best practice to change the Sorting Hat’s voice for now. If Warner Bros. want to use this opportunity to rebrand the Sorting Hat as someone who Thinks Like A Lawyer, send an email to tips@abovethelaw.com.

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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