Lawyers and marketers do battle:

It appears that Universal Studios recognize that the followers of the cult favorite TV show Firefly would be a great source of viral marketing for the movie based on the show, Serenity. They put together a huge viral marketing campaign, in part with Special Ops Media. However, as with so many of these things, it appears that the marketers at Universal forgot to tell the lawyers at Universal, who recently decided to send out cease and desist letters to a bunch of the guerilla marketers they had pushed to promote the film. Adding insult to injury, the lawyers also demanded $8,750 in “retroactive licensing fees” from at least one individual.

Maybe, just maybe, this story indicates that the entertainment industry’s copyright lawyers should ease up a little. Not that they will.

In a nice twist, the fans who got the letters are considering retroactively billing Universal for their marketing services.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 5:08 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.