Generic Fair Use

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Tag: star wars

Those *were* the droids I was looking for! Star Wars and its universe of IP rights

On May 25, 1977, George Lucas unleashed Star Wars: A New Hope into the cinematic consciousness. A movie that cost $11 million to make generated nearly $800 million in worldwide box office receipts. Even at the time, it would have been hard to predict the scope of Star Wars in popular culture forty years later. In October 2012, Disney bought Lucasfilm – and the rights to all things Star Wars – for $4 billion.

Not even Peter Minuit got as good of a deal for his 60 guilders when he acquired Manhattan.

It may not be an understatement to claim that the Star Wars property is collectively the most valuable intellectual property asset in modern history. I am not the first to assert this. Consider the ever-expanding scope of characters, stories, movies, books, toys, multimedia, and all the related technology that can be associated with Star Wars. With Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi opening on December 15, 2017, a deeper dive into the scope of Star Wars and its intellectual property universe seems timely and appropriate.

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The force is strong with Star Wars intellectual property

Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens on December 18, 2015.  It will be the biggest movie of the year.  It will also likely be the most infringed copyrighted work of the year (and 2016, too).  It will be the seventh official full-length Star Wars movie to be released in theaters since 1977.  Though I recently re-watched the prequels and I would prefer to act as if they did not exist.  No matter what revisionist history might try to argue.

Since the original movie, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, George Lucas has not been shy about protecting his intellectual property rights.  It is practically a running joke that any reference to Star Wars will expose you to a lawsuit from Lucasfilm or Disney.  (The Walt Disney Company bought Lucasfilm for $4,000,000,000 in October 2012 and immediately announced plans for a new set of Star Wars movies using the same characters and settings.)

To demonstrate just how sincere the creator of the Star Wars universe is about protecting his creation, his characters, the movies, the settings, the concepts and the ancillary names, brands and logos – the following is a summary of the notable issues relating to Star Wars intellectual property.

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