The inventor of the troll doll only made a sliver of the proceeds
Comments
m-i-l
bruce511
This is an interesting counter-example to the idea that IP rights should be abandoned.
The IP in question here would be copyright (as mentioned in the article) and these days likely trademark as well.
He did have a copyright,but this was deemed invalid. Copies flooded the market.
Now,of course,all (most) toys have a limited shelf life. But the clones are just in it for the money,the developer is discouraged and retreats. Further development is abandoned.
With software there are advantages to being open, or closed, but in both cases copyright and trademarks serve to protect the project. Obviously clones, copies,fakes and forks exist,but trademarks and licensing serve to protect the original authors intentions, and the author has choices in what protection they want.
Patents on software though such. I can't defend those.
nitwit005
I doubt a copyright would have helped all that much. You can't copyright the idea of a toy troll in general. There was a prior lawsuit over a toy that was very similar to Barbie. They resolved it by changing her face to be a bit different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sindy
The trademark does seem to matter, so long as you can convince people they should buy your brand.
shusaku
> “He modeled its ugly face after a local butcher,” his son, Neils, later told The New York Times. “My father owed this man money, and this was his revenge.”
Alas, the butcher too failed to put the proper copyright notice on his face
throw101010
I'm not sure if I'm too tired or my ESL status is showing, but I can't make sense out of this.
His father owed money to a butcher, why did he need to have a "revenge" against someone who borrowed him money?
toast0
You're right, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have revenge against someone you owe money. Perhaps the butcher frequently harassed the father about it, or aired grievances in public or something else that made it worthy of revenge.
As a side note, I'd use lent instead of borrowed, the butcher lent the father money. Borrowed can be used in this way, but at least in my experience typically is only used as the father borrowed the money (from the butcher). Regional variations exist though, some of my friends from other areas of the US do use borrowed in both ways.
cxr
> Regional variations exist though, some of my friends from other areas of the US do use borrowed in both ways.
Personal examples notwithstanding, those people are definitely not using the word correctly. "Borrowed" is just not the right word in that context. When responding to an ESL speaker, suggesting that it might just be a matter of taste/preference/whatever is mildly negligent.
throw101010
Makes sense. Thanks for the clarification and the advice!
folli
> His timing was perfect: Many of the same people who had played with trolls during the first wave now had kids of their own.
So I guess we're ripe for a third wave of troll craze...
bonzini
That has already happened with the movie, though perhaps not in the form of dolls.
ShadowBanThis01
I remember the whole "trolls" fad as only the pencil-topper things from the '80s, not '90s or later. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Had no idea they dated back to the '60s.
JKCalhoun
Yeah, I see how they slot in now with the whole Ed "Big Daddy" Roth Weird-Ohs craze (circa 1969). There's a cringey "Leave it to Beaver" TV episode whose existence shows the cultural impact the "weird ohs" had on suburban norms (Beaver and his boy-pals each have a weird-oh shirt they agree to all wear to school on the same day ... well, you can guess how that plays out).
kshay
It seems you can buy reproductions of these now (of course). https://boingboing.net/2018/11/21/monster-shirts-based-on-an...
kshay
Hmm, pretty sure the Beav was long gone from the airwaves by 1969…
RajT88
Stuff like that comes and goes.
Rabbits feet on necklaces were trendy when I was in high school. It wasn't the first time they were trendy among young people.
WalterBright
I remember when having an oversized comb sticking out of your jeans pocket was a trendy thing for teen men. That one never returned.
birdyrooster
damn shit like this makes it obvious how basic humans are
s1artibartfast
I think it instead that is a fascinating example of how complex humans and societies are. You could write dozens of books on the subject and still not fully explain one weird thing we do
moxvallix
Maybe this is just a safari thing, but does anyone else see <strong> tags in the title of this article?
Arnavion
HTML has:
<h1 class="c-post__title"><strong>How the inventor of the troll doll missed out on a fortune</strong></h1>
lisp-pornstar
That's a weird behaviour to treat a tag as data rather than as a node. The HTML you provided shouldn't display "<strong>How the inventor[...]</strong>" but *How the inventor[...]*, should it ?
hanniabu
I think parent is saying it rendered the strong tags as plain text
Waterluvian
Yes. They’re not there until the page ships a separate set of CSS.
This must be some bug in whatever CMS they’re using to make it easy for writers to author webpages.
eyelidlessness
The original title as posted was closer in wording to the actual article’s title. The edit feels more provocative (er, “clickbait” is the local term) than unedited.
nightfly
Meta: why is paxcoders comment dead? It's a reasonably accurate tldr and isn't inflammatory or off topic.
hanniabu
Some people are angry and live their life disgruntled
pibechorro
As do most artist..
paxcoder
TL;DR Didn't put a proper copyright on the dolls and - I reckon because there was no Berne convention at the time - copycats flooded the market
> "Dam’s company ... had filed for a US design copyright back in 1961. And in 1965, it took action in court against a company that it claimed was infringing on its trolls without proper license... The court found that Dam Things had failed to include a copyright mark on hundreds of thousands of trolls it sold. Furthermore, the copyright notice ... was invalid, as it did not explicitly name Dam’s company... Trolls, it was ruled, were in the public domain."
Reminds me of some other stories where inventors lost out:
- James Dewar invented the vacuum flask, but had his design patented by a company called Thermos. He took them to court and "while Dewar was recognised as the inventor, because he did not patent his invention, there was no way to prevent Thermos from using his design"[0].
- Wilkinson Sword introduced stainless steel razor blades in 1962, but a company called Gillette "managed to patent it before Wilkinson did ... [and Wilkinson were] forced to pay royalty to Gillette for each blade it sold"[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dewar
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillette