Urheberrechte, Markenrechte und Patente \u2013 auch die Jahrzehnte umspannende Karriere der Beatles trifft immer wieder auf diese Aspekte des Geistigen Eigentums von Urhebern. Dave Davis vom Copyright Clearance Center geht im nachfolgenden Artikel der Frage nach, wie weit es die Beatles wohl ohne Urheberrechte und Co. geschafft h\u00e4tten. Seine Schlussfolgerung k\u00f6nnen wir schon einmal vorwegnehmen: Nicht sehr weit! Warum das so ist, erfahren Sie im folgenden Beitrag…<\/p>\n
The Beatles, as John Lennon said, were just a band. A band that made it very, very big<\/a>. Existing as an ongoing creative entity from some time in 1961 to mid-1970, the group\u2019s primary creative work included musical compositions and recordings (of course) which are subject to copyright protection. But during their heyday, their outputs were so popular and influential that other aspects of copyright, aside from that of composition and arrangement, were entailed and utilized as well.\u00a0 Eventually, trademarks, and to a lesser degree patents, were also brought into the mix (as it were). When I started thinking about a topic for this guest column, it occurred to me that a short walkthrough of some of the most well-known intersections of the Beatles and intellectual property (IP) would provide a useful and interesting means of a) getting me to write about the Beatles, something I have always wanted to do, and b) highlighting, through this lens, some points of the structure of IP protection which are worth knowing about and helpful to remember for librarians and other non-lawyers engaged with IP.<\/p>\n Early on in the copyright classes I teach, I provide a module about distinguishing the various forms of IP -by example of a can of good ol\u2019 Coca-Cola \u2013 which includes nearly all the standard forms of intellectual property: a\u00a0patent<\/em>\u00a0(on the\u00a0riveted \u2018stay-tab\u2019<\/a>) , a\u00a0trade secret<\/em>\u00a0(the formula for the drink itself<\/a>), and multiple\u00a0trademarks<\/em>\u00a0 (not only the word marks but also the distinctive trade dress\/branding we are all familiar with, including even the company\u2019s\u00a0own proprietary typeface<\/a>), as well as copyright in the\u00a0art and any expressive words<\/a>\u00a0printed on the can. There are other forms of IP as well (though probably not in the soda can), but those will do for our purposes today.<\/p>\n As it turns out, however innovative we may recollect the Beatles as having been, they didn\u2019t file for any patents (one of them did, but it was much later \u2014 1994),<\/a>\u00a0and they didn\u2019t have any literal trade secrets that I know of.\u00a0 But over the arc of their career together, they exploited several forms of IP, including patented inventions and trademarks of their own, and certainly copyrights in various media (including books and films) -not just for music.<\/p>\n Beginning with the obvious, the\u00a0Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership<\/a>\u00a0was one for the ages, and provided the listening world with many compositions of enduring popularity. (So also, but to a lesser extent, did the original compositions by George Harrison during his Beatle years; Ringo, too got a few songwriting credits as Beatle.)\u00a0 Leaving the purely business arrangements to one side, one key attribute of the band\u2019s success was its ability and inclination to turn out new material at a regular, not to say prodigious, pace:\u00a0188 original compositions in 8 years, according to most standard catalogs<\/a>. Additionally, under the \u201ccover recordings\u201d rules in place, they were able to supplement this output with new versions of works written by others \u2013 around 25 \u2018cover\u2019 arrangements, many of them on the appropriately named album, \u201cBeatles for Sale.\u201d These cover songs had to be, and were,\u00a0licensed-in by the Beatles for release on records<\/a>\u00a0as well as for public performance.<\/p>\n This brings us to an important point about copyright and licensing: In the normal case, commercial reuse of someone else\u2019s material requires a license of some sort, and usually a payment as well. This is almost always true in the music industry, which has (or had, until the digital age) well-established procedures for this sort of licensing. These arrangements allowed for the band to realize profit from the success of their recording efforts as well as from the publication of the sheet music of their compositions. In the case of The Beatles, these rights allowed them to garner substantial incomes from their work for many years after they were no longer working together (and indeed, half the band members have now passed on and their estates handle their copyrights.)<\/p>\n Secondarily, the Beatles exploited copyright in artwork.\u00a0 Their first few albums were graced with standard-issue photographs of the band members.\u00a0 But, beginning with originally commissioned cover art (a line drawing & collage by\u00a0Klaus Voormann<\/a>) for \u201cRevolver\u201d in 1966, they brought out several more album covers with an \u2018artsy\u2019 feel, including the beyond-famous \u201cSgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band\u201d installation by Peter Blake and Jahnn Haworth, and the \u201cMagical Mystery Tour\u201d cover designed by John Van Hamersveld.\u00a0 The \u201cYellow Submarine\u201d cover used images and character designs drawn by Heinz Edelmann (not Peter Max, as is commonly believed); and then came the minimalist blank-white \u201cWhite Album\u201d cover designed by Richard Hamilton with significant input by Paul McCartney. The final two albums after those \u2013 \u201cAbbey Road\u201d and \u201cLet It Be\u201d \u2013 reverted to the more familiar style of still-shot photography. The artsy covers, however, garnered attention from the world of pop art and led to emulation, for example by Andy Warhol\u2019s cover design for \u201cThe Velvet Underground and Nico<\/a>\u201d (1967).<\/p>\n Bottom line, the Beatles were no strangers to the visual arts and certainly invited its practitioners into the party that was Beatlemania. Many other examples are available, but I\u2019ll stop there.<\/p>\n As I suggested above, trademarks may be thought of, casually, as brands; or, in other words, indications of a company that are specifically evocative of its products. A company\u2019s logos are good examples of visual trademarks. Sounds \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if evocative of the enterprise (a rock band, in this case) can also be trademarks. If The Beatles\u00a0had<\/u>\u00a0sought an audible trademark, the prime candidate would obviously have been\u00a0the opening chord<\/a>\u00a0from \u201cA Hard Day\u2019s Night\u201d (1964).<\/p>\n As it turns out, The Beatles had \u2013 and the band\u2019s \u201cestate\u201d still maintains \u2013 two notable trademarks: the dropped \u201cT\u201d logo of the name of the band, and a photograph of a green-skinned apple which identified the releases on their record label. The dropped \u201cT\u201d logo was designed by the improbably named\u00a0Ivor Arbiter<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 from whom all rights were presumably eventually purchased, and it was drawn on the head of Ringo\u2019s bass drum by a local painter named Eddie Stokes in 1963. It remains in use, despite a few stylistic changes, to this very day. The photorealistic image of a green \u201cGranny Smith\u201d apple (whether cut in half, showing the fruity inside, or in the round) for the newly-formed Apple Corps Limited was designed by Gene Mahon (again, from whom all rights were presumably purchased) and used from 1968 onwards to represent the business side of The Beatles\u2019 enterprise. That image also has been in continuous use as a trademark since that time, despite some controversy with the also\u00a0apple-based logo<\/a>\u00a0of a rather different enterprise. These trademarks serve to indicate, in consumer-protection mode, that the products or services on offer \u2013 be they audio recordings or otherwise \u2013 are those of the Beatles, and not ersatz or knockoffs of some sort.\u00a0 A simple example of this function appears on the cover of a music-based video game, Beatles Rock Band (2009), nearly four decades after the records themselves were first released. The Apple logo is right there on the cover and\u00a0appears in the video trailer<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 signaling to the buyer that this is the real deal, i.e. a licensed and authorized product.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I had thought I wasn\u2019t going to discuss anything about patents. Well, \u201cIt\u2019s in the mind, you know,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0and I\u2019ve changed mine while writing this essay.\u00a0\u00a0 A patent protects, in the language of the US Patent and Trademark Office,\u00a0\u201d \u2026any art or process (way of doing or making things), machine, manufacture, design, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof \u2026which is or may be patentable under the patent laws of the United States.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0In common parlance, a patent protects an invention. While the four Beatles themselves were not themselves inventors, they showed substantial interest and some involvement with technical innovation involving music. Two primary examples of this are: \u2018Magic\u2019 Alex, and the MOOG synthesizer.<\/p>\n Alexis Mardas was hired in the late 60\u2019s by the newly-formed Apple Corps company as the head of its Electronics division, Apple Electronics. Although he never seems to have\u00a0applied for any patents<\/a>, or actually finished any projects for Apple at all, he did\u00a0intimate that he was constantly about to<\/a>.\u00a0 By contrast, the Beatles\u2019 use of the MOOG synthesizer, a 1965\u00a0electronic music-making device<\/a>\u00a0of Robert Moog, was greeted with market success. Several of the compositions on their 1969 album, \u201cAbbey Road,\u201d including Harrison\u2019s track \u201cHere Comes the Sun,\u201d feature the unique sounds of their custom-built MOOG synthesizer and that novel instrumentation (aesthetically speaking) contributes\u00a0 strongly to the pleasing overall effect of the record.<\/p>\n There are many additional vignettes about the Beatles\u2019 involvement with IP which I may take up in a subsequent post, such as the times they were under a threat of lawsuit for copyright infringement, or when (many years later) Paul McCartney went back after the US publishing and distribution rights they had signed away as callow youths, hungry for success. But going just from what we looked at above, we can see that in their relatively short career together The Beatles journeyed Across (much of) the IP Universe -which is organized into various categories, all for the purpose of protecting and encouraging creative expression of all kinds.<\/p>\nFirst principles first, however:<\/h2>\n
Copyrights<\/h2>\n
Trademarks<\/h2>\n
Patents<\/h2>\n