Kurosawa films and copyright suit

[Eija Niskanen]

And to follow, the same studio has no hesitations in producing remakes
of Kurosawa films (the recent Tsubaki Sanjuro remake).

Eija

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 10:41 PM, Mark Nornes <amnornes at umich.edu> wrote:
> Toho is suing the DVD distributor that put out those cheap Kurosawa DVDs to
> the tune of $1.2 mil. We have been following this controversy a bit on
> KineJapan, so I thought I'd post this.
>
> I find this pretty perplexing. The argument as it's described in the press
> is that the films fall under the pre-1971 laws, which extend protection 38
> years beyond the death of the "author" (2038 in Kurosawa's case). The
> distributor has been operating under the post-1971 law, which pegs open
> season at 50 years after release; they've put out Kurosawa's first 8 films.
> Tokyo District Court took Toho's side, and the distributor is appealing. But
> Toho is going ahead with a suit.
>
> So what I don't get is how this is actually in the studio's interest. They
> have historically resisted treating directors as authors, right? On the face
> of it, this appears to be a gambit to extend copyright as far out as
> possible. But at the same time, it would seem to expose them to demands for
> profits from directors, either from the past or in contracts from here on
> out.
>
> Does anyone understand the logic here?
>
> Markus