George Lucas was involved in an interesting intellectual property court case about the stormtrooper helmets, shown in the first Star Wars movie.
In 1976 while Star Wars episode IV was being produced, Andrew Ainsworth, a young industrial design graduate here in Britain, had been approached to design head gear structured on a number of sketches. He spent two days producing the prototype for the helmets found in the film. No written agreement with regard to the creation of all these helmets had been written.
Mr Ainsworth held on to the moulds which just sat and collected dust for a long time until 2002 at which time he sold a helmet and some other items for £60,000 at an auction. Recognising the nostalgic importance of these authentic items, he began selling more helmets using the original moulds via his website together with a number in america.
In 2004 George Lucas and others began courtroom proceedings on opposition of Mr Ainsworth in the US for $20,000,000 on the basis that Mr Ainsworth did not have the Intellectual Property (“IP”) rights in the helmets and for that reason didn’t have the right to sell them. George Lucas was successful with his claim in the US legal courts but as Mr Ainsworth had no assets there, the courtroom battle moved to Britain.
Intellectual property solicitors
After having spent about £700,000 protecting his claim, Mr Ainsworth was, generally speaking, successful in his defense.
The primary problem for the Uk legal courts to consider, which was in the end resolved in the Supreme Court, was whether or not the helmets qualified as works of sculpture in which case they would be covered by copyright laws (which will last for the life of the author plus an extra 70 years) or if they were merely functional costumes (whereby the protection would be restricted to fifteen years starting from the date that they were publicized).
The Supreme Court ruled that the helmets lacked the necessary high quality of artistic creation required of a sculpture. The protection had thus expired and so Mr Ainsworth was totally free to use and sell the helmets.
This case illustrates the importance of ensuring that any IP you make or make use of is handled properly and also the possibly huge charges involved if it’s not.