Lucasfilm Loses U.K. Court Case Over Helmets

By Erik Larson - Jul 27, 2011

George Lucas’s production company Lucasfilm Ltd. failed to convince Britain’s highest court that its U.K. copyrights were violated by sales of replica Imperial Stormtrooper helmets from the movie “Star Wars.” 

The ruling today by the U.K. Supreme Court in London upheld a December 2009 appeals court finding that British engineer Andrew Ainsworth, who helped design the white helmets, didn’t infringe U.K. copyright law by selling the copies, which he cast from original molds.

The ruling “maintains an anomaly of British copyright law under which the creative and highly artistic works made for use in films -- which are protected by the copyright laws of virtually every other country in the world -- may not be entitled to copyright protection in the U.K.,” Lucasfilm said today in a statement.

Lucasfilm, based in Nicasio, California, filed the U.K. case after winning a $20 million judgment against Ainsworth in 2006, in a California lawsuit over the helmet sales. The judge in that case said Ainsworth’s company, Shepperton Design Studios Ltd., infringed Lucas’s copyright and made misleading claims about the helmets’ authenticity.

Lucasfilm argued Lucas had already determined the look of the fictional soldiers for his 1977 science-fiction epic, before asking Ainsworth to work on the stormtroopers’ helmets.

Utilitarian Creation

Lucasfilm failed to convince the court that the helmet qualified as a sculpture as opposed to being a purely utilitarian creation. If the court had deemed it a sculpture, Ainsworth would have been violating U.K. copyright law with his online sales.

“It was the Star Wars film that was the work of art that Mr. Lucas and his companies created,” the justices wrote. “The helmet was utilitarian in the sense that it was an element in the process of production of the film.”

Lucasfilm could take its U.K. copyright claim to the European Court of Justice, said Thayne Forbes, a managing director at the brand-valuation company Intangible Business.

“The Star Wars films are an upmarket, fantasy experience for the audience, and the merchandise must be reflective of this or it risks damaging the brand value,” Forbes said. “What Lucasfilm quite rightly wants to avoid is stormtrooper helmets and armor being found in cheap plastic-toy territory.”

The ruling today gave a partial victory to Lucasfilm by granting it some rights to sue in the U.K. over infringement of foreign copyrights. That portion of the judgment is an “important step” in modernizing U.K. law and bringing it into line with the European Union, Lucasfilm said.

“This is the first time the Supreme Court has ruled on an issue of great commercial and legal importance, namely the jurisdiction of the courts in the U.K. over infringements taking place abroad,” Lucasfilm said in the statement.

The U.K. Court of Appeal in London said in its 2009 decision that Lucasfilm couldn’t enforce the California judgment in the U.K. and warned Ainsworth about the risks of further sales in the U.S.