how far would you go in protecting your IPR (intellectual property rights)?
it is a fine balance between control and visibility.
an old lesson from an unusual source- Disney in Italy
[this post has been published first on May 4th on draugiem.lv, in my "virtual village" ]
Some of my online friends are in the entertainment business, and most of the others are quite used to consume entertainment
well, I do not know in other countries- but in Italy, until not so long ago…
…it was almost a rule that, as soon as you were able to read: your parents would give you a subscription to the Italian version of Mickey Mouse, called “Topolino”.
ok. I am old so, I mean: kids in the 1970s and 1980s had a subscription to it
the funny part was: “topolino” (literally “small mouse”) was the name that was given to in when, in 1930s, it became compulsory to do change every foreign name into Italian names.
the Italian publisher of “topolino” eventually sold to another company, Arnoldo Mondadori, and they added some twist.
in Italy, it wasn’t just a children cartoon: they invented a cast of characters that did not exist in other countries, and in almost every issue there was some parody of “grown up” literature.
or some crazy story that invented new machines.
it was so popular that… also in serious companies the sample information (like: when you fill a form) was with the Italian names of “Topolino”.
in the 1980s I was literally escorting a prospect on behalf of my employer and our partner to a conference in UK, and one day she was supposed to do some exercise, that required writing some information.
all the English wrote “X1, X2, X3″… boring stuff.
she wrote “Pippo, Topolino”, and all their addresses (Pippo=Goofy, Topolino=Mickey Mouse, and so on)
few years later, Disney had at the helm somebody that was routinely lambasted for squeezing money out of rocks
well… somebody discovered that Italy was one of the major markets for printed Disney stories… and so, they bought the rights back from the Italian publisher (or made an agreement- I do not remember).
in early 1990s, somebody discovered that everyone was using names from the Italian version of Disney material as business cases, fake names, and so on.
Americans and English used John Smith? We used Topolino.
can you imagine a bank presentation where everybody is showing Mickey Mouse as the customer name?
well, it was certainly creative.
but it did not last long.
one day, at the coffee machine (the water cooler is an imported habit, not an original Italian one )…
… I saw something that I did not expect.
the company managing Disney rights in Italy (or so it was reported) had announced that, for every use of a Disney-copyrighted name… 1 USD was due (or the equivalent)
and it wasn’t just the “visible” names, like in presentations etc.
also for names used internally, be it in writing or electronically in messages (it was before the Internet was used in Italy), files, documents…
so, everyone rushed to replace “Topolino” with “Mario Rossi” (the Italian equivalent of John Smith).
booooooooooring!
pity- it was so much more fun to create the information for a presentation: it was a creative game, and more than once some additional jokes were born out of the way we mixed the names
and, of course, by trying to squeeze too much out of customers, they removed the huge visibility that they had had before.
so, whenever I see some company that does not understand that you have to give something for free to get something for free… I think about that day at the coffee machine
Mickey Mouse rights :)
how far would you go in protecting your IPR (intellectual property rights)?
it is a fine balance between control and visibility.
an old lesson from an unusual source- Disney in Italy
[this post has been published first on May 4th on draugiem.lv, in my "virtual village"
]
Some of my online friends are in the entertainment business, and most of the others are quite used to consume entertainment
well, I do not know in other countries- but in Italy, until not so long ago…
…it was almost a rule that, as soon as you were able to read: your parents would give you a subscription to the Italian version of Mickey Mouse, called “Topolino”.
ok. I am old
so, I mean: kids in the 1970s and 1980s had a subscription to it 
the funny part was: “topolino” (literally “small mouse”) was the name that was given to in when, in 1930s, it became compulsory to do change every foreign name into Italian names.
the Italian publisher of “topolino” eventually sold to another company, Arnoldo Mondadori, and they added some twist.
in Italy, it wasn’t just a children cartoon: they invented a cast of characters that did not exist in other countries, and in almost every issue there was some parody of “grown up” literature.
or some crazy story that invented new machines.
it was so popular that… also in serious companies the sample information (like: when you fill a form) was with the Italian names of “Topolino”.
in the 1980s I was literally escorting a prospect on behalf of my employer and our partner to a conference in UK, and one day she was supposed to do some exercise, that required writing some information.
all the English wrote “X1, X2, X3″… boring stuff.
she wrote “Pippo, Topolino”, and all their addresses (Pippo=Goofy, Topolino=Mickey Mouse, and so on)
few years later, Disney had at the helm somebody that was routinely lambasted for squeezing money out of rocks
well… somebody discovered that Italy was one of the major markets for printed Disney stories… and so, they bought the rights back from the Italian publisher (or made an agreement- I do not remember).
in early 1990s, somebody discovered that everyone was using names from the Italian version of Disney material as business cases, fake names, and so on.
Americans and English used John Smith? We used Topolino.
can you imagine a bank presentation where everybody is showing Mickey Mouse as the customer name?
well, it was certainly creative.
but it did not last long.
one day, at the coffee machine (the water cooler is an imported habit, not an original Italian one
)…
… I saw something that I did not expect.
the company managing Disney rights in Italy (or so it was reported) had announced that, for every use of a Disney-copyrighted name… 1 USD was due (or the equivalent)
and it wasn’t just the “visible” names, like in presentations etc.
also for names used internally, be it in writing or electronically in messages (it was before the Internet was used in Italy), files, documents…
so, everyone rushed to replace “Topolino” with “Mario Rossi” (the Italian equivalent of John Smith).
booooooooooring!
pity- it was so much more fun to create the information for a presentation: it was a creative game, and more than once some additional jokes were born out of the way we mixed the names
and, of course, by trying to squeeze too much out of customers, they removed the huge visibility that they had had before.
so, whenever I see some company that does not understand that you have to give something for free to get something for free… I think about that day at the coffee machine
Tags: copyright, disney, draugiem, gramata, intellectual, ipr, italy, mickey, mouse, property, rights, topolino
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 08:38 and is filed under commentary, everything, virtual diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.