Re: Lame "dilution" assertion by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

To add fuel to the fire, there is the line of comment based on the concurrence to the 2 Live Crew (Acuff-Rose v. Campbell) case that says that to be a parody, the new use must "target" the work from which it takes. Judge Posner wrote an influential article claiming that target parody, as it is becoming known, is fair use, but mere borrowings that do not make fun of the source upon which the parody version is based are really derivative works and must seek permission and pay the original author. This is a thread in the Dr. Seuss case. There, the new authors used Seuss to parody OJ, but not to parody Seuss. Therefore, in these terms, it was a "source" parody and not a "target" parody.

Making fun of Dilbert seems to fit within the "target" area and thus be distinguishable from Seuss. But than again, they didn't send me the scarry c&d letter :) And of course, that only addresses the copyright issue, and not the dilution argument. Has anyone mention the pre-federal dilution case of Hormel v. Henson? There is parody that was found to be non-diluting and was in the "taget" realm.

Adrienne Meddock
<ameddock[_at_]bambi.acc.nccu.edu> Received on Tue Apr 20 1999 - 19:00:25 GMT