legal challenge to HeavyInk: "destroy all copies of Celebrity Showdown Olivia Munn"

Hey folks, I thought you might be interested to hear that we received a letter demanding that we take down a web page and destroy all copies of a certain comic.

Here’s the lawyer’s letter:

Here’s my response:

From: tjic
Subject: Olivia Munn

Nigel,

Re: your letter of 4 February 2010 regarding

http://heavyink.com/comic/13136-Celebrity-Showd...

I write to clear up some misconceptions.

First, the item offered for sale is not “our” comic book – it is
created by a third party and offered for sale through our website.

I have never heard of Olivia Munn until you brought her to my
attention, but a quick web search turns up a Wikipedia article
describing her thusly

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

Olivia Munn (born Lisa Olivia Munn) is an American actress, model
and television personality.

and her self promoting web page at

http://www.oliviamunn.com/

where she displays near topless pictures and links to a cover shot at
Maxim magazine.

Given these two websites, it is clear that she is a public figure. As
a public figure, the use of her likeness meets the tests for the
parody copyright exception set forth in both Campbell v. Acuff-Rose
Music, Inc. and the more recent Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin.

As such, we have no intention of taking down our webpage, destroying
any inventory, or refusing to offer the comic for sale.

If you have any further comments you may reach me at this email
address,

Travis Corcoran, President
Heavy Ink

—
http://HeavyInk.com/
Your Comics Are Here!

Holy cow. Good work out of you on the response, Travis. I used to work in the legal industry, but left in 2006 after just being disheartened by the whole thing. I could no longer come to grips with what I was doing after 12 years. I’ll tell you a story about it some time, but back on topic, keep us in the loop on this one. This is just plain ridiculous.

Good luck.

-b.

nice!

why would they send you a letter like that though, shouldn’t they be sending it to the publisher?

Well, they may also have notified the publisher, and are just trying to see how many copies they can remove from circulations by bluffing.

TJIC – given Munn’s popularity (she’s on G4, a cable channel devoted to video games and other geekery) you could probably get some marketing milage about this at /. and bb.

If anyone here is a member of news.ycombinator.com, I note that I submitted a link to this post as an article.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1101796

It’d be cool if it got upvoted onto the front page.

Wow. Just wow.

I am proud to buy my comics at Heavy Ink. :)

I believe, TJIC, the correct response to the letter you sent back to the lawyers, is what they call in MMORPG terms, Pwned.

We’ve been Boing Boinged.

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/04/law-firm-d...

While I really do not like Munn, I am glad that you are refusing to give in to the lawyers demands.

My goodness.

You should thank them for the marketing opportunity. Someone call Bleeding Cool and Robot 6!

I’m shocked this hasn’t happened before what with all of the unathorized comic biographies being published these days…but dang, good on Heavy Ink for telling these folks to take a hike. (But sorry, still not really interested in the book at all.)

There really isn’t anything these people can do with the biography comics. They are public figures and aren’t being represented unfairly in the comic. This Olivia Munn comic may not be a biography, but it is a parody and thats allowed by law. She has no right to do this.

Good for you not being immediately intimidated and running in fear. You sure pulled “Campbell v. Acuff-Rose
Music, Inc. and the more recent Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin” out pretty fast. Good Googling or did you just call a lawyer?

Next up, you’re going to get some static from Antarctic Press for masquerading as them, or something. In related news, this is hilarious!

@Bast – he gets a lot of practice at this with SmartFlix.com. It’s routine. ;-)

Uhh. Maybe this is a foolishing question but since this isn’t even released until April do you even have any copies to ‘destroy’? I just think they would go after the publisher so you wouldn’t receive your shipment of the comic… But I am sadly misinformed in this field.

Good for you for politely telling them to stick it where the sun don’t shine though. Bravo. I don’t think the have a case at all against you, but I wish you luck in any case.

Well, they just corrected the post – HI is no longer a publisher.

Just read this on boingboing and had to come add my voice to those others who buy comics from you and are happy to see a response like this to thugs like those. Nicely done!

Another example is MAD Magazine. MAD Magazine is all parody, I guess they get letters like this all the time.

Uh, guys? She’s in Ironman 2
http://superherohype.com/news/ironmannews.php?i…

I didn’t realize this was unauthorized and at first figured this was a case of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing, but this is still pretty crazy.

Wow that’s awesome. The funniest part I think is the part where they thought Heavy Ink was a publishing company.

She’s in Ironman 2

So?

(I watched the video, she comes across as a reasonable person)

I also didn’t realize this was an “unauthorized” comic when I read the solicit. I just assumed Munn signed her name to some random, disappointing comic idea. (I mean, seriously: “Unable to escape, her gamma-irradiated cells explode and unleash the fury of The 50-Foot Womunn.”)

Now that I know (assume?) it was made without her thumbs-up, I bet she thought it sounded just as bad as I did and asked her publicist do something about it. That’s fine with me.

But when publicists call lawyers and lawyers threaten retailers unless they immediately destroy all copies of a book that won’t even exist until April? Yeah, not so much.

Hopefully the lawyers will wise-up, apologize to HI for the trouble, and focus on the actual publisher of the book. And even then, leave the nastygrams at home and just ask nicely. Maybe just to slap “Unauthorized” on the cover so people won’t assume she endorsed the book, like I did.

All that said, annoying lawyers is fun. I subscribed. :)

3:30 into the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwxC_qKzCTQ