RANDOM THOUGHTS : BEAUTY (PART DEUX)

[jemly]

welcome back to the junk drawer of random beauty thoughts and musings. it has been nearly a year, so i think it is time for a rew RT thread ! 

when i'm doing my makeup in the morning, my dog sometimes throws a fit until i move his food bowl over to where i'm sitting. i'm certainly not the diva in our relationship.

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THE QUESTIONS THREAD:  http://community.sephora.com/t5/Products/The-Question-Thread-Because-not-all-questions-need-their-ow...

VINTAGE BEAUTY VIDEOS THREAD ! :  http://community.sephora.com/t5/Beauty-Confessions/VINTAGE-BEAUTY-VIDEOS/m-p/1826210#M69382

SWATCH REQUEST THREAD : http://community.sephora.com/t5/The-Swatch-Board/THE-SWATCH-REQUEST-THREAD/td-p/2223212

[kssweetheart]

@NancieNano - Good on you girl! You should be proud of yourself, it's easy to let go of certain beauty rituals etc when dealing with a chronic illness. It is a pain and uses up energy while you're doing it, but in the end it usually is worthwhile.

I'm really glad you were able to do that for yourself, congrats to you! I hope you can find ways to deal with your chronic illness - even just little things can make a difference. Hang in there, just said a prayer for you. Take care.. 😊👊

[NancieNano]

@kssweetheart Thank you for your kind words of encouragement and prayers. I have truly missed the BT community.

[Paiigee]

I don't know if anyone thinks about stuff like this, but I do sometimes because I'm weird, I suppose.

So, sometimes brands will name their shades after certain things in pop culture. I own "Abbey Road" by Ulta's in house brand in their eyeshadow trio, and I know people were suggesting Penny Lane for Wander (and I'm upset they didn't pick it because I would've bought it for name alone.) Then there's Shiro, who uses names and images (fan art of images) owned by Nintendo.

I know a little bit of copyright and trademark law, and as far as I can remember, this wouldn't necessarily fall under fair use. Ulta might pay for the right to use the name, but I don't know if they do. Etsy shops sometimes get shut down for things like this, or they receive cease and desist letters. I know some got cease and desist letters from Taylor Swift for selling things with her lyrics on them, so Sephora or Ulta came out with a lipstick or eyeshadow called "Shake It Off" would they be told to stop too or did they pay for that right?

[JazaChai]

There's a limit to how small a unit of text you can claim copyright on. There's no way, realistically, that anyone could claim a copyright on a phrase. What you'd be looking at is a trademark, and trademarks are reserved for specific things.

That is, when you register a trademark, you have to register the mark for use with a specific product/service/thing. You don't just register "Shake It Off," full stop; you register "Shake It Off" as a mark for cosmetics, or household cleaning products, or whatever.  You don't actually get any legal claim on a song title, as a phrase (or even as a song title! how many songs have similar/identical titles?), unless you register it somehow. It's possible T-Swift has "Shake It Off" registered for all sorts of things though, in case she decides to market stuff with that on it.

That's because the point of trademark law is to prevent confusion to consumers about who is responsible for a product, and to prevent subsequent companies from taking advantage of the first person's work in building a particular brand. 

So, in context, probably nobody would believe that the hypothetical Sephora lipstick called "Shake It Off" was a T-Swift collab, if the other colors were things like "Wake Up" and "Stay Strong" - but if all the other shades were names of T-Swift songs too, they probably would. And that context would likely effect who won the hypothetical lawsuit. 

The thing about cease and desist letters is, they don't necessarily have any relationship to the actual merits of a lawsuit. All it means is, if you don't stop the Letter Writer will sue you. So you might technically be in the right, but do you want to fight T-Swift's lawyers? Probably not. And that's why looking at what gets taken down or renamed isn't necessarily a good gauge of who's right - it's a better gauge of who has more money to sue with.

ETA: Yeah, basically what @Anonymous said.

[Paiigee]

Yes, I know all of this. I was just thinking about how it's interesting that big companies get away with stuff like this when etsy shops get shut down all the time. Taylor Swift was just an example.

I am, however, still curious about how Shiro gets away with it considering they have entire collections with names pulled straight from Nintendo's games.

[JazaChai]

I think it comes down to small business being intimidated more easily, and big companies staying farther on the right side of the law. Because suing Sephora is more of a pain than suing a random Etsy person. So it's not necessarily that bigger companies are getting away with anything, it's that the bigger the company, the less likely the C&D is to overreach the law, and the less likely the receiving company will be intimidated into relabelling or whatever.

Probably Shiro gets away with it either because Nintendo, etc., doesn't notice it, or because those names aren't trademarked for cosmetics in the US (or possibly not trademarked at all, depending on how major the character is). And/or because they care less about C&D letters. I do notice that for things like Harry Potter, they don't use the names of characters or other things that would likely be trademarked. I would venture to guess they thought about that and picked their names to try and avoid most of it. And the fact that they have their own art helps too; they're not copying stills from the movie or anything. 

[Paiigee]

That's true. A lot of their names are more references than directly taken from it. I just noticed in the Legends Collection that a lot of it is pulled straight from the game (Din's Fire, Nayru's Love, Epona, Ganondorf, etc) Maybe Nintendo isn't as harsh as say, Disney. 

[Anonymous]

Context and examples are always appreciated, @JazaChai!

[JennBeth]

I think that's why you see more common phrases, like "Woke", "Bae", "Chill", that sort of thing, and less song titles.  If you do see song titles, or movies titles, it's usually a play on that thing.  Someone pointed out the other day that the Charlotte Tilbury lipstick "**bleep** Perfect" is probably a play on the movie title "Pitch Perfect" since the rest of the colors that came out at the same time all had music-ish related names.  No clue if Ulta got the rights to use "Abbey Road", but since that album was named after a real road, it may be generic enough to not be worth fighting over.  You'd probably be more likely to see "Shake it Off" as the name of a product in a collaboration between Taylor Swift and a brand.  In the way that Gwen Stefani's makeup used a lot of her signature things, even if they weren't specifically trademarked.

[NancieNano]

Just read this and the Charlotte Tilbury lipstick "**bleep** Perfect"  could also be a play on Pink's song "Perfect" which is also well known as "**bleep** Perfect".

[Anonymous]

"Shake it off" is a much older phrase than Taylor Swift.  She got the title of her song from the phrase that someone else started.  How would she defend it in court?  

People like to think that they can trademark, copyright, etc, anything and everything, but there's gotta be definite  evidence that only that person/company put those words/ingredients/materials in that specifically designed way.

Problem with small business peeps is that they often don't have neither the time, money, nor the inclination to even attempt to defend their work in a suit and will just say ok, I will stop, if a letter comes to them.  Part of the cost of doing business.

Sephora or Ulta would have their own corporate lawyers who may suggest that  they work out a deal with Taylor Swift's lawyers or who may just say TS can "bring it on."

[heartsmyface]

One.  One finished lipstick!  Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!  

[m26430]

LOL THE COUNT! I am dead. 

[JazaChai]

I laugh every time I scroll past this. Because I'm reading the post in the Count's voice. And it's glorious.

Fun Fact: BF and I have done that a lot - one of us will start off with "X! X [things]!" and then the other of us will chime in on the "Ah ah ah!" ...one time we did this in front of friends, and they were like o.O

[heartsmyface]

Fantastic!  The hubs and I do this too!!!  It's awesome finding someone with your brand of weird.  

[jesscheems]

I can't get Counts voice out of my head lol

[Anewxa]

@jesscheems that makes two, two of us, ah ah ah! 

[jesscheems]

Lol I read that in his voice too -_-

[chocopudding]

Hahah @JazaChai I love this! I think it's great when you and your partner can have these sorts of moments. Your friends' reactions though...LOL

[angel7594]

Nice! I love finishing the lipsticks so I can back to MAC them 😀

[jozkid]

Ha! I have a Mac Redwood that is older than I care to remember!