Weekly IP Buzz for the Week Ending March 19, 2021
In this week's post, we see that the Japanese government made waves by announcing that the popular hobby, cosplaying, would now be subject to Japanese copyright law.
New Japanese Cosplay Copyright Law Worries Enthusiasts
Japan shocked a large population of their country this year by announcing that the popular hobby of cosplay would now be subject to Japanese copyright law. As Japan is seen as the Mecca for cosplayers and has been known to use “cosplay ambassadors” in the past, this new announcement seemed ominous for cosplayers across the globe.
As a subculture, cosplayers run the gamut from young children wearing Halloween costumes to more serious cosplayers that may spend thousands of dollars and countless hours on recreating their costumes. The more dedicated and successful the cosplayer, the more they are able to become recognized and well-known in cosplay circles, leading to possibly securing endorsements or appearance fees for representing certain characters.
And this might be exactly why Japan decided that cosplay has crossed from being a harmless hobby to being potentially infringing behavior. And to the small subsection of people who know both the law and understand the subculture, the idea that cosplay could collide with copyright law is actually not that farfetched. Because cosplay undoubtedly relies on protected source material derived from popular cartoons, comic books, video games, and movies, it then follows that the characters that make the most popular subjects for cosplay are generally the most well-known (and lucrative) intellectual property of others.
Read the full article here.
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In addition to publishing Thriving Attorney, Darin M. Klemchuk is founder of Klemchuk LLP, a litigation, intellectual property, and transactional law firm located in Dallas, Texas. Click to read more about Darin Klemchuk's practice as an intellectual property lawyer as well as IP mediation services. For more on the latest developments in IP law, see Ideate blog and IP Questions Answered blog.