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Additional Perspective on Dr. Seuss/Star Trek Ruling
The copyright dispute over a Dr. Seuss/Star Trek mashup divided industries and intellectual property scholars, but it didn't trouble the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit at all. Instead, the court resoundingly rejected the fair use defense of the writers and publisher who placed Star Trek characters in the setting of Dr. Seuss's best-selling book Oh, the Places You'll Go! and called it Oh, the Places You'll Boldly Go!
Ninth Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown acknowledged in Dr. Seuss Enterprises L.P. v. ComicMix LLC, 983 F.3d 443 (2020) that "fair use analysis can be elusive to the point of 'approaching the metaphysics of the law.'" But, she wrote, "Not so in this case."
The court's decision means that in the Ninth Circuit commercial mash-ups will have to do more than place new characters in old settings to qualify for fair use. That's sure to please the Motion Picture Association of America, which had warned that a finding of fair use would open the door for third parties to infringe on soundtracks, toys, games, clothing and other markets that derive from classic movies and TV shows. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, on the other hand, had cautioned that "millions of Americans communicate through the art of mash-up, putting multiple works in conversation with one another to create new expression."
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