What is Art? - Southwestern Law School

136 J. INT’L MEDIA &ENTERTAINMENT LAW VOL. 4,NO. 2of reasoning in the judgment and whether it offers an arguably persuasiveauthoritative and contemporary yardstick about the legal meaningof art—not only sculpture—in our contemporary culture.The case concerns the 1977 movie Star Wars Episode IV: A NewHope. The first lawsuit was filed in 2005 by George Lucas and hisStar Wars merchandising companies against an English props maker,Andrew Ainsworth, and his company. In 2004 Ainsworth had reproducedreplicas of the white Imperial Stormtrooper uniforms used inthe film, which he had sold in the US. Lucasfilm claimed ownershipof copyrights in the uniforms, and violation thereof by Ainsworth,and was granted a default judgment by US District Court, Central Districtof California, in September 2006 for $20 million including $10 milliontriple damages under the Lanham Act.Ainsworth lived in the UK and had no assets in the U.S. Lucastherefore filed lawsuits in the UK to enforce his US default judgementin the UK; further or alternatively, to (re-)claim violation by Ainsworthof US copyrights in the Imperial Stormtrooper uniforms. In2008 London’s High Court of Justice tried and rejected the claims.Lucas appealed to the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, whichin 2009 effectively supported the High Court’s decisions. Lucas then appealedto the UK Supreme Court, and that court’s reasoning in supportof its decision about the legal meaning of “sculpture” is both illuminatingand instructive, and merits detailed consideration.As the highest UK appellate court, the UK Supreme Court’s focuswas on copyright legislation, its interpretation and application by thetwo lower courts, and whether there had been judicial errors. The findingsof fact in the first trial court were not a final appeal issue. Thegravamen of the final appeal was the intellectual property rights in“various artefacts” made for use in the film, of which the ImperialStormtrooper helmet was agreed to be the paradigm that would be decisiveof the appeal as a whole. The helmet was helpfully described bythe first trial judge as follows: “One of the most abiding images in thefilm was that of the Imperial Stormtroopers. These were soldiers cladin white armour, including a white helmet which left no part of theface uncovered . . . The purpose of the helmet was that it was to beworn as an item of costume in a film, to identify a character, but inaddition to portray something about that character—its allegiance,force, menace, purpose and, to some extent, probably its anonymity.It was a mixture of costume and prop.” 111111. [2008] EWHC 1878 (Ch), [2009] FSR 103, paras [2] and [121].