Phone Home: Inflatable Alien Costume Held Copyrightable
To ring out the old year on an otherworldly note, the Western District of Pennsylvania issued a preliminary injunction in a case involving the unauthorized copying of an inflatable adult Halloween costume that created the "whimsical" illusion that the wearer was being carried around by a seven-foot-tall green space alien.
January 19, 2024 at 09:43 AM
6 minute read
To ring out the old year on an otherworldly note, the Western District of Pennsylvania issued a preliminary injunction on Dec. 29 in a case involving the unauthorized copying of an inflatable adult Halloween costume that created the "whimsical" illusion that the wearer was being carried around by a seven-foot-tall green space alien (the costume).
The U.K.-based plaintiff in AFG Media v. Poptrend-Official, No. 23-cv-1840, 2023 WL 9023415 (W.D. Pa. Dec. 29, 2023) created the costume in 2016 and first marketed it in August 2017, promoting it through the plaintiff's website and through videos posted to YouTube. It obtained a U.S. copyright registration for the work in 2020, "protecting the g2-D [sic] sculptural aspect" of the work. In the interim, without the plaintiff's knowledge or consent, the defendants began marketing a costume in 2019 that the court found to be "nearly identical."
The court specifically noted that the defendants' work, like the plaintiff's, included "a large bright green alien with a rounded head, prominent eyes and a neutral facial expression holding a small man up in front of it who is wearing a black long-sleeve shirt, blue pants and white tennis shoes with black lines."
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