There was recently some controversy over the ownership of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. The Hollywood Reporter explains that International Media Films sued Michael Lucas, the creator of a pornographic remake of the Fellini classic, back in 2007. The dispute revolved around the films chain of title. Apperantly, the films copyright has changed hands several times over the years. IMF took the last action in 2001, when they filed with the US Copyright Office on a restoration copy of the film. There was a lot of back and forth, but in the end the New York district court dismissed the case. La Dolce Vita had been in the public domain in the 1990s and unless copyright is proven otherwise, the film still is public property. The judge in the case clarifies that it is the job of the plaintiff to prove the film is still under protection.
How does someone, or a company in this case, lose track of a chain of title? Shouldn’t records be kept of such things? The article never really discusses how much of the original film was used in Lucas’s version. And considering the pornographic nature of the remake, it’s doubtful that it would harm the market for the classic. And if the film was in the public domain once, how exactly did someone ever regain its copyright? Even if IMF had copyrights on a restored version of the original, isn’t the non-restored version still up for grabs? There are way too many holes in this story to be sure of anything but it seems like International Media Films was just looking for a profit to which they had no claim.
link to article: http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/04/fellini-la-dolce-vita-lawsuit.html
