Title

Replies

Name

School/ Law firm

THE SPANISH PRISONER

There aren't very many, but i.p. protection (and theft) plays a significant role in David Mamet's THE SPANISH PRISONER (even though his dialogue gets some of the terminology wrong).

Robert C. Cumbow

Graham & Dunn PC

The Social Network (2010)

Flash of Genius (2008)

The Prestige (2006)

Sourabh Vishnubhakat

The Third Man

The Third Man, of course.  Counterfeit drugs.

Andrew W. Torrance

Professor of Law | Faculty Senate President | University of Kansas

Visiting Scholar | MIT Sloan School of Management

The Spanish Prisoner

The Spanish Prisoner is a great movie but has one of the worst manglings of IP I've seen.

Mark A. Lemley

Stanford Law School

Durie Tangri LLP

The Devil wears Prada

Logorama (documentary)

For those who want an immersion in the world of fashion brands, and why they matter so much to some, The Devil Wears Prada is a good movie as well. The documentary Logorama (you can get it on YouTube, at least until last month) is a perfect short movie, 20 minutes, that you can show also in class as example of artistic (fair, I believe) use of marks.

There are also movies that include parodies of parts of other movies or that recall parts of other movies, like the Naked Gun movies, the Austin Powers movies, or some cartoons, like The Wild (a mix of The Lion King and Madagascar 1, for example).

Dr. Irene Calboli

Professor of Law, Marquette University Law School

Visiting Professor, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore

Night At the Opera

A bit off point but not completely:

The contract scene from Night At the Opera:

The contract scene between Driftwood and Fiorello ("the party of the first part ..."):

Fiorello: Hey, wait, wait. What does this say here, this thing here?
Driftwood: Oh, that? Oh, that's the usual clause that's in every contract. That just says, uh, it says, uh, if any of the parties participating in this contract are shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified.
Fiorello: Well, I don't know...
Driftwood: It's all right. That's, that's in every contract. That's, that's what they call a sanity clause.
Fiorello: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can't fool me. There ain't noSanity Clause!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ALYkBIF-4

And maybe Fahrenheit 451 ?

Howard P. Knopf

Macera & Jarzyna/Moffat & Co.

The Last

Station

The Last Station (about the copyrights and estate of Leo Tolstoy)

Kenneth D. Crews

Faculty Member, Columbia Law School

   and Munich Intellectual Property Law Center

Duplicity (2009)

Duplicity (2009) is Hollywood's generally entertaining take on trade secret misappropriation and corporate espionage, with a good cast (Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Tom Wilkinson).  

Dave Levine

Why Do Fools Fall in Love

Why Do Fools Fall in Love tells the somewhat fictionalized story of the struggle over termination rights to the copyright of that song by the three "widows" of Frankie Lyman.

Amy Cohen

Western New England University

Cadillac Records

Sneakers

The People v Larry Flynt

Black Test Car

The Age of Innocence

Desk set

Adaptation

Barton Fink

Seven Psychopaths

(1) Cadillac Records (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1042877/) was an entertaining movie about Blue Note Records label.

(2) Sneakers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/), more about espionage and security, is just an all around fun and engaging film to watch.

(3) My favorite takes on IP are in various episodes of The Simpsons. There is a classic episode involving the litigation over ownership in the Itchy & Scratchy copyright. And another episode involving Homer's patenting a method for curing back problems. These episodes were better than any of the movies I have seen dealing with similar issues, but that's not saying much.

(4) Really going back: an old Dick Van Dyke episode from the 1960's involving copyright over a song Rob Petrie wrote before becoming a TV show writer.

(5) My favorite IP related scene is in The People v Larry Flynt. I have played it before teaching the Ninth Circuit fair use case. Here is my paper reenactment.

Falwell's attorney: Flynt is countersuing.
Falwell: Suing? Me? Whatever for?
Attorney: You copied Flynt's ad and put it in all your flyers to your parishoners. That's copyright infringement.
Falwell: (dumbfounded) The depth of that man's depravity astounds me.

Black Test Car (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056158/) a Japanese film about trade secret theft in the car industry.

There are a lot of good documentaries on the IP industries. But nothing says it better than that scene.

The Age of Innocence has a Supreme Court patent case in the background. The case gets more mention in the book than in the movie.

For law and technology issues, see Desk Set, a great Tracey-Hepburn classic about fact checkers being replaced by a, gasp, computer.

Larry Ribstein's article on how corporations are represented in the movies. Is IP just a marker for evil?  Sounds simplistic, but great movies use the trope effectively.

Another film: The Constant Gardener from a few years back.

this reminds me of Aaron Sorkin's The Farnsworth Invention on Broadway. It has not been filmed, but the screenplay is available. The play is about Farnsworth's battles with RCA and Sarnoff. 

It still strikes me that Ribstein's point about corporations in film applies equally to IP in film. What the heck I guess IP owners wear the black hat, corrupt the innocents, and trample on the little guy.

Shubha Ghosh

Red Belt

Red Belt. I haven't seen it (it was recommended by a friend), but one of the tangential plot lines apparently involves the stealing of a Trade Secret.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbelt

Yvette Joy Liebesman

The Pirates of Silicon Valley

Don't think this one was mentioned yet:
The Pirates of Silicon Valley

Andrew J. Lopata

Adjunct Instructor
University of Oregon

Art & Copy (documentary)

The Greatest movie ever sold

Shattered Glass

One Two Three

Here are a couple of my favorite documentary films about branding:  Art & Copy  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1333631/plotsummary and

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1743720/    

Another favorite— although with a looser connection to IP is-- Shattered Glass about how Stephen Glass's fake news stories almost brought down the New Republic.

I think One Two Three is about commercial espionage too, but I haven't see it in a long time. 
I do remember James Cagney and the secret to Coca Cola. 

As to books, there's Emma Lathen's Green Grow the Dollars. She (actually, they--it's the pen name of two economists) wrote several other mystery books with law/technology twists. 

Jeannie Fromer has a wonderful analysis of Willie Wonka and the secrets of the chocolate factory in the Trade Secrecy book I edited with  Kathy Strandburg. 

Deborah R. Gerhardt

Rochelle Dreyfuss

Assistant Professor of Law

UNC School of Law

Ney York University

Willie Wonka

On the topic of trade secret and economic espionage there is of course the original Willie Wonka movie! On one level it is just a fun kids movie. But watching it recently with my kids I realized the whole premise turns on Wonka's paranoia (or legit concerns) about the mysterious Slugworth and others stealing his valuable trade secrets. He kicks out all his regular workers and replaces them with Oompa Loompas as they are the only ones he can trust. And of course an excellent movie for goofing on contract law as well. Still haven't read the underlying Roald Dahl book, but would be interesting to compare. And there is the weird real world corporate sponsorship aspect behind the movie as well.

If we rope in books, then there are of course Paul Goldstein's novels. And on the opposite side--mangling IP law--there is Paul Gallico's The Boy Who Invented the Bubble Gun. Although a good read, as I recall it was premised on a supposed requirement to deliver a working prototype to the PTO. I was the same age as the kid in the story when the book came out and an aspiring inventor too, and this totally threw off my ideas about what you had to do to get a patent. I thought you had to personally take a working prototype to DC like the kid in the book!

Sean M. O'Connor

University of Washington

The Hudsucker Proxy

Meet the Robinsons

I don't think these have been mentioned: The Hudsucker Proxy and Meet the Robinsons.

Guy A. Rub

Assistant Professor of Law

The Ohio State University, Michael E. Moritz College of Law

Jerry Maguire

Back to the Future

"Jerry Maguire": Tom Cruise returns to his sports agency firm (probably unrealistic that they'd let him back in the building to begin with) after having been fired over lunch, and demands that his secretary give him "my numbers," that is, the phone numbers of his clients-- so that he can ask them to follow him out the door.

      Of course, today all of that information would certainly already be on an agent's cell phone.

     The movie's also noteworthy for the scene in which Jerry belatedly realizes that he should have gotten a signed agency agreement, instead of an oral commitment, from a star player's father.

And at one point Jerry's only client, Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) demands that Jerry "stop using that word ["kwon"]: that's *my* word!"

 If I remember "Back to the Future" right, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), when he goes back in time, plays "Johnny B. Goode" at a high school dance-- thus inspiring Chuck Berry to create the same song (and raising odd questions about who exactly is the song's originator, and how).

Walter Effross

American University Washington college of law

My favorite media representation of IP is the line of Coke vs Coke Zero "taste infringement" commercials. This one discusses seeking a preliminary injunction, sending a cease and desist letter within hours, and consumer confusion:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv8YgrqUCVU. This one compares taste infringement to music sampling and says it's "basically a patent copyright": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy4-zcGgxeI. There are plenty more. These are also great for ethics issues (frivolous claims, conflicts of interest, etc.).

Daniel B Ravicher

Yeshiva University

Gilda (1946)

Thin Man

Casablanca

Music and Lyrics

Doctor Zhivago

Gilda (1946) with Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford is a classic noir where the bad guy is forming an aluminum cartel in South America based on some patents. The IP issues are pure mcguffin but you should seize any excuse to watch this film. There is also a patent involved in the murder that forms the backdrop to the first Thin Man film with William Powell and Myrna Loy (1934). If you like it, don't miss After the Thin Man, the first of several sequels, which has some nice shots of 1930s San Francisco and a very young Jimmy Stewart as the bad guy.

Also, the letters of transit at the heart of the plot in Casablanca have some features in common with IP -- they are a legal intangible and obviously assignable, which drives their market value and hence much of the action in the film.

For a more recent film you might try Music and Lyrics (2007) with Hugh Grant as a composer living comfortably but aimlessly off royalties from his one hit song, a popular Christmas ditty he has grown to hate. Drew Barrymore plays the redemptive love interest who helps Grant grow up.

Finally in an odd way Doctor Zhivago is partly about producing art in turbulent times when the state apparatus not only does not reward it but actively discourages it ("I used to admire your poetry [but now] .... The personal life is dead. History has killed it." -- Pasha, to Zhivago). Which you could see one of two ways, according to your view of things: as the triumph of intrinsic motivation theories (IP unnecessary: the poems get written, at great personal sacrifice, and for anyone who can get hold of them there are no restrictions on use); or as a tragedy in which Zhivago gives a great gift that brings nothing but grief, due in large part to the moment in time in which he finds himself. Either way, food for thought.

Rob Merges

Berkeley law school

Jara Cimrman, Lezici, Spici

There is a three-minute section of a Czech film that is perfect for discussing the differences between the first-to-file and the first-to-invent systems.

In Jara Cimrman, Lezici, Spici a fictional and unappreciated and forgotten Czech genius, Jara Cimrman, arrives at the patent office with various inventions - each time only to find that other applicants (such as Bell and Edison) made it to the patent office before he did.

There is a version of the film with English subtitles - let me know if you need any help finding a copy.

Andrew, once you compile a list of IP movies, could you share it with the list?

Marketa Trimble

Associate Professor of Law
William S. Boyd School of Law
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

About a Boy

Kudos to Rob for the Casablanca reference.  I'd venture that many Mcguffins -- Casablanca's letters of transit, the Maltese Falcon, the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction -- have a lot in common with IP "things":  unseen items (often with mystical attributes and origin stories) manufactured to drive a story framed largely by rival rent-seekers.

Also, try About a Boy (Hugh Grant and Toni Collette, from 2002).  Hugh Grant plays a loutish London playboy whose life of leisure of made possible by the royalties from an annoying Christmas song composed by his father.  The song is "Santa's Super Sleigh." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKCsmmTe1eI  It's a great movie, and every time I see it I am reminded of debates about copyright term extension.

Michael J. Madison

Professor of Law
University of Pittsburgh

Coming to America

Coming to America.  Lots of conversations about what McDonald's trademarks are infringed by McDowells, and there is a scene where the owner reads through a McDonald's franchisee SOP manual. 

Jasmine C. Abdel Khalik

University of Missouri Kansas city

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

How about Shakespeare in Love (1998), in which questions of authorship and ownership (as the fictional Shakespeare sells the same play over and over again to rival companies of players) are particulalry pointed because of the self-awareness and wit of the screenplay.

My favorite exchange:

WILL SHAKESPEARE 
                     (shouts, to the players)
                 Gentlemen! Thank you! You are welcome.

                           FENNYMAN [the money]
                 Who is that?

                           HENSLOWE [who owns the playhouse]
                 Nobody. The author.

                           WILL
                 We are about to embark on a great 
                 voyage.

                           HENSLOWE
                 It is customary to make a little 
                 speech on the first day. It does no 
                 harm and authors like it.

Michael J. Madison

Professor of Law
University of Pittsburgh

Imitation of Life

The Hucksters

I reference Imitation of Life (Claudette Colbert) for trade secret, wherein Colbert's maid gives her the family secret for pancake batter, which Colbert turns into a corporate empire (and later generously gives the maid a few shares of stock); The Hucksters (Clark Gable) for trademarks and advertising (there's also a scene where Sidney Greenstreet spits (to put it mildly) on a conference table to demonstrate the commercial power of an unforgettable image); I forget the titles at the moment, but the film in which Nat King Cole plays WC Handy is good for copyright, and the one in which Claude Rains plays an inventor developing an ice box but fails to race to the patent office is good for patents (I'll try to find the titles). 

Lateef

The Man in the White suit

How could I forget - this is a great English classic:

Alec Guinness in "The Man in the White Suit" (1951)

Sidney Stratton, a brilliant young research chemist and formerCambridge scholarship recipient, has been dismissed from jobs at several textile mills in the north of England because of his demands for expensive facilities and his obsession with inventing an everlasting fibre. Whilst working as a labourer at the Birnley mill, he accidentally becomes an unpaid researcher and invents an incredibly strong fibre which repels dirt and never wears out. From this fabric, a suit is made which is brilliant white because it cannot absorb dye, and slightly luminous because it includes radioactive elements.

Stratton is lauded as a genius until both management and the trade unions realize the consequence of his invention once consumers have purchased enough cloth, demand will drop precipitously and put the textile industry out of business. The managers try to trick Stratton into signing away the rights to his invention but he refuses. Managers and workers each try to shut him away, but he escapes.

The climax sees Stratton running through the streets at night in his glowing white suit, pursued by both the managers and the employees. As the crowd advances, his suit begins to fall apart as the chemical structure of the fibre breaks down with time. The mob, realising the flaw in the process, rip pieces off his suit in triumph, until he is left standing in his underwear. Only Daphne Birnley, the mill-owner's daughter, and Bertha, a works labourer, have sympathy for his disappointment.

The next day, Stratton is dismissed from his job. Departing, he consults his chemistry notes. A realisation hits, and he exclaims, "I see!" With that he strides off, perhaps to try again elsewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_White_Suit

Howard P. Knopf

Macera & Jarzyna/Moffat & Co.

American Gangster

Not a movie about IP, but for years I used a scene from American Gangster to teach a couple of basic trademark concepts.  In the scene, Denzel Washington's character, a drug kingpin who packages his heroin in blue cellophane and calls it "Blue Magic", explains to Cuba Gooding, Jr.'s character why the latter can't buy Blue Magic, cut it with additives, and continue to re-sell it as Blue Magic.

Sadly, the scene in the final cut of the movie isn't as good as the shooting script.  Here's the script version:

FRANK
Then I don't understand. Why do you have
to take something that's perfectly good
the way it is, and wreck it?

(Jackie doesn't seem to understand.)

FRANK
Brand names mean something, Jackie.
Consumers rely on them to know what
they're getting. They know the company
isn't going to try to fool them with an
inferior product. They buy a Ford, they
know they're gonna get a Ford.
Not a fuckin' Datsun.
    (his look says, right?)
Blue Magic is a brand name; as much a
brand name as Pepsi. I own it. I stand
behind it. I guarantee it and people
know that even if they don't know me any
more than they know the chairman of
General Foods.

JACKIE
What the fuck are you talking about,
Frank?

FRANK
What you're doing, as far as I'm
concerned, when you chop my dope down to
five percent, is trademark infringement.

(That. That's what this is about. Jackie nods, but -)

JACKIE
With all due respect, Frank, if I buy
something, I can do whatever I want with
it.

FRANK
That's not true. That's where you're
wrong.

JACKIE
If I buy a car, I can paint it, God damn
it.

FRANK
Jackie, you don't need to. You don't
need to make more money than you can with
Blue the way it is. No one does. At a
certain point it's just greed.

JACKIE
What do you want, Frank? You want me to
call it something else?

FRANK
I have to insist. You call it Blue
Magic, that's misrepresentation.

JACKIE
Fine. I'll call it Red Magic, even
though it doesn't sound as good.

FRANK
That's all I'm saying. Wrap it in red
cellophane and -

JACKIE
Pink Magic. Black Magic -

FRANK
Whack it down to nothing, tie a bow
around it and call it Blue Dogshit if you
want, just don't let me catch you doing
this again.

Rosenblatt Betsy

Whittier Law School

The Network Effect: How the Software Industry Profited from Piracy (documentary)

Here's one from the "Stay Tuned" department. It doesn't directly answer Andrew's question, but I know that he'd like it regardless…

The National Post runs a story today about a Toronto documentary producer who plans to produce a film titled: “The Network Effect: How the Software Industry Profited from Piracy,” a documentary that, as it turns out, would be based, at least in part, on my 2005 article. 

Earlier this month, he was ordered to pay $445,000 to Microsoft, Adobe, and Rosetta Stone, who sued him after he sold copies of counterfeit software on craigslist and kijiji. 

Here's the story on the National Post: The ‘network effect': One man's quest to prove software companies profit from piracy. According to the story, "Mr. Thompson says he doesn't regret the hefty fine, because his intent was to highlight a strategy called the “network effect” that software makers employ to establish a dominant position. Through the network effect, the theory goes, technologies become more valuable as the number of people using them increases, which in turn enhances the effect until they become ubiquitous and their owners richer and more powerful. It was also research, Mr. Thompson said, for a documentary film on which he is working called “The Network Effect: How the Software Industry Profited from Piracy,” which he plans to fund through private backing and a campaign on a crowdfunding website."

It would be nice, of course, to have such a documentary. I suspect, however, that the fact that the producer now owes $445,000 makes this less likely to happen. Too bad he didn't read or didn't take seriously the "legal implications" part of my article before he started selling the software…

And now we can begin another thread: if he produces such a film, would it be a derivative work of my article? 

Ariel Katz

Associate Professor

Innovation Chair, Electronic Commerce

Director, Centre for Innovation Law and Policy

Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

 The Water Engine

Along the same lines, David Mamet's The Water Engine (TV movie based on
his play, available only on VHS, not on DVD).  William H. Macy plays an
inventor in the 1930s who invents an engine that runs only on water.  He
goes to a patent lawyer (Joe Mantegna).  Pretty soon his life is in
danger, because the petroleum-based industry establishment (personified
by Charles Durning) realizes that the water engine will put them out of
business.

Tyler Ochoa

Santa Clara University

Title

Replies

Name

School/Law firm

The Constant Gardner

There are some movies like The Constant Gardner that touch on related themes of international pharma development.

David W. Opderbeck

Seton Hall University School of Law

Professor of Law
Director, Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
Livingston Baker Research Fellow

Good Copy, Bad Copy (documentary)

What about Good Copy, Bad Copy? It's more of a documentary but it is international in scope.

Brenda Reddix-Smalls

North Carolina Central University

The Constant Gardener

Black Test Car

The Constant Gardener for a fictional and highly polemic film.

I also  recommend Black Test Car, a Japanese film about industrial espionage in the auto industry in 1960's Japan. More comparative than international.

Shubha Ghosh

Shubha -- yes, I agree. Still, it raises issues that are worth discussing, and it's entertaining.

David W. Opderbeck

Seton Hall University School of Law
Professor of Law
Director, Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
Livingston Baker Research Fellow

Jurassic Park

The Prestige

The Social Network

Jurassic Park, being set on an island off Costa Rica, tees up international tech transfer and patent infringement/trade secret misappropriation, though the book goes a bit more into it than the film.

The Prestige similarly addresses international trade secrecy and inventorship/authorship, as the rival illusionists conduct their feud across the United Kingdom and the United States. There's also a great subplot involving the Tesla/Edison feud.

In The Social Network, there is the angle of Facebook's geographic growth. In one scene, Divya Narendra and the Winklevoss twins discuss jurisdiction against Mark Zuckerberg, viz., violating Massachusetts law by stealing their idea, then federal law by expanding to Yale, Columbia, and Stanford. And later in the film, Sean Parker having offered to put Facebook on two continents, the Winklevoss twins' host in England mentions a daughter at Cambridge who is on Facebook.

Saurabh Vishnubhakat 

Duplicity

Duplicity is perhaps the ultimate trade secret misappropriation movie. The espionage is international in part, though not much is made of law, US or foreign.

Mark A. Lemley

William H. Neukom Professor
Stanford Law School
Director, Stanford Program in Law, Science, and Technology
partner, Durie Tangri LLP

founder, Lex Machina Inc.

The Last Station

The Last Station - about Leo Tolstoy giving away the copyrights to his works - is a great movie for this purpose.

Lesley Ellen Harris

One, Two Three

One, Two Three - a late Billy Wilder film with James Cagney.  Cagney plays the head of Coca-Cola bottling in Germany, with aspirations to move up the company ladder in Europe.  It's a West (Coca-Cola)-meets-East (East Berlin Communists) screwball comedy.

Michael J. Madison

Professor of Law
University of Pittsburgh

Patently Obvious

Patently Obvious, BBC, directed by Ashley Bruce. In our library it is JZ1318 .C58 2001 v.13 

The film is from 2001 but provides a great material for a variety of discussions - e.g., protection of traditional knowledge, requirements of patenting, commercialization of inventions, and working requirements.

I used the film in my International IP class and my students enjoyed it.

Marketa Trimble

Associate Professor of Law
William S. Boyd School of Law
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Claude LaLouche, 1981,

Claude LaLouche, 1981,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Uns_et_les_Autres

And of course the ultimate "derivative work", compilation, over the top and embroiled in complex international copyright litigation masterpiece - Walt Disney's Fantasia.....

https://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/145/145.F3d.481.34.45.96-9223.96-9205.html

Email: hknopf@gmail.com

Knock Off

No one's mentioned “Knock Off”? Here is the IMDb description: “Action star Jean Claude Van Damme plays a fashion designer who must join forces with a C.I.A. agent to combat terrorism.” The tag line on the movie poster is: “There is no substitute.” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120724/

Bruce E. Boyden

Assistant Professor of Law

Marquete University Law School