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posted by martyb on Thursday September 03 2015, @08:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-is-her-dress-yellow-or-black? dept.

A Fox News anchor is suing a US toy company, Hasbro, for more than $5m (£3.3m) over a toy hamster that she says resembles her and shares her name. Harris Faulkner said the company's portrayal of her as a plastic hamster "was demeaning and insulting". She filed a legal case saying the toy resembled her traditional professional appearance, including complexion, eye shape and eye make-up design. The toy is part of the company's popular Littlest Pet Shop collection. It was first introduced in 2014, according to legal documents (pdf) obtained by entertainment news website Deadline. The legal case, which was filed at a district court in New Jersey on Monday, said Hasbro had "wilfully and wrongfully appropriated Faulkner's unique and valuable name and distinctive persona for its own financial gain". It said Mrs Faulkner, who has been a Fox News anchor for 10 years, had never given the toy manufacturer permission to use her name or likeness and in January demanded they stop using the product. But three weeks later, it said, the doll was still available on the Hasbro website.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34133723


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  • (Score: 2) by seeprime on Thursday September 03 2015, @08:39AM

    by seeprime (5580) on Thursday September 03 2015, @08:39AM (#231633)

    A name change would have been satirical. Using a person's real name on a toy that looks like them. without their permission, is unprofessional.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by massa on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:34AM

      by massa (5547) on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:34AM (#231654)

      http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/2FB5/production/_85331221_harris.jpg [bbci.co.uk]

      IT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE HER AT ALL.
      Just madness...

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday September 03 2015, @08:38PM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday September 03 2015, @08:38PM (#231954) Journal

        But in all fairness (and balancedness), it does not resemble a hamster to any great degree, either.

        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 04 2015, @06:00PM

          by Immerman (3985) on Friday September 04 2015, @06:00PM (#232358)

          And? Teddy bears don't really resemble bears to any particular degree, but that doesn't give me a right to sure teddy-bear manufacturers for copying my likeness - because they resemble me even less.

          • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday September 05 2015, @06:01AM

            by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday September 05 2015, @06:01AM (#232529) Journal

            And now, from here to eternity, I shall always have in my mind that immerman is right and sure to be a teddy bear. I am thinking "Teddy Ruskpin" more than the original cub spared by Theodore Roosevelt. (Who lead a secret life and later became Smokey the Bear! On my honor truth!). But immerman, teddy bear, no likeness implied or intended. If this keeps up, I will have to form non-veridical images of The Mighty Buzzard, Ethanol, and Runaway, but the only image that comes to mind for those is Oscar, as in Oscar the Grouch. Or Skescies.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @11:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @11:47AM (#231675)

      Farris Haulkner, Hasbro's latest edition to its Littlest Pet Shop collection ...

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:53PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:53PM (#231730) Journal

      What Massa already said. The toy doesn't look like the news anchor. The ONLY similarity I see between the two, is the name. So - some broad has laid claim to her name, and her name cannot be used by anyone, anywhere?

      Where's Joe? He can sue someone for G.I. Joe. And, Barbie, or Barbara - she and Ken can sue the whole Barbie doll dynasty.

  • (Score: 5, Touché) by Gravis on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:04AM

    by Gravis (4596) on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:04AM (#231636)

    Harris Faulkner said the company's portrayal of her as a plastic hamster "was demeaning and insulting".

    so basically, they did to Fox News what Fox News did to News. ;)

  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:28AM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:28AM (#231638) Homepage Journal

    Maybe it's just me, but I sure don't see any resemblance. The toy looks like any girlie-girl toy, with overly large eyes in an overly large head. It has a characteristic cutesy animal face, not even vaguely human. In the photos it appears to be beige and white, whereas Ms. Faulkner is many shades darker. A "likeness" of Ms. Faulkner it certainly is not, either that, or the artist is a complete failure.

    Hasbro hasn't indicated that it is named after anyone. They don't market it using references to Ms. Faulkner. Certainly, the other animals in the series don't seem to be named after real people. Although "Harris Faulkner" is an unusual name, there are at least two others in the US, and likely more in the world. She certainly does not have a copyright on her name.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 5, Funny) by dyingtolive on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:59PM

      by dyingtolive (952) on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:59PM (#231736)

      Yeah, I don't see it. One is a fake plastic triviality that's probably full of stuff that's bad for humans to come into direct contact with, and the other is a toy made by Hasbro.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:03PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:03PM (#231739) Journal

      I looked up a list of other Littlest Pet Shop characters [hasbro.com]. Most of them have names that could be real people. Are courts going to be flooded from lawsuits from "Otis Beasley"'s and "Kiki Russo"'s now?

      There is no resemblance between the cartoon character and the Fox News person. That's purely imagined, as purely imagined as Pink claiming the Statue of Liberty resembles her.

      It sounds to me like a person whose career ambitions exceed her perceived career reality and wants to generate a little controversy to shake things loose.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by skullz on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:55PM

        by skullz (2532) on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:55PM (#231779)

        That's purely imagined, as purely imagined as Pink claiming the Statue of Liberty resembles her.

        Now that Pink is sober, maybe she can sue Hasbro for Pinkie Pie, the Party Pony.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by SpockLogic on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:43PM

      by SpockLogic (2762) on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:43PM (#231773)

      The question yet to asked is "Was your mother a hamster and did your father smell of elderberries!"

      --
      Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Dunbal on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:39AM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:39AM (#231642)

    Not only does the toy not look like you but it is also smarter than you...

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:55PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:55PM (#231731) Journal

      "it is also smarter than you"

      That's cold man. True, but cold.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by RedBear on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:55AM

    by RedBear (1734) on Thursday September 03 2015, @09:55AM (#231646)

    This is a weird one. I would like to laugh and laugh about this as I laugh about everything Fox News anchors do professionally, but... the toy is actually named "Harris Faulkner". Strangely it doesn't show up in searches on Hasbro's toy store website, but it comes right up on Amazon by just searching for "Harris Faulkner". There it is, right on the package. Looking at the back of just that one package there are at least a couple dozen other related Littlest Pet Shop characters with mostly very made-up sounding names like "Sugar Sprinkles", "Gertrude Catterson" and "Ozzie Shellstein". Even the more mundane examples like "Zoe Trent" or "Ripley Davis" don't seem to correspond to any known public personages.

    In that context it is difficult to defend the use of the real name of a public figure as anything less than a deliberate targeting of that person, for reasons unknown. Very strange indeed. Maybe someone in the design department was a fan and thought Ms. Faulkner would like having a toy named after her, and nobody in marketing thought to double-check whether it was a name of a well known person, but that's hardly an excuse. Changing even a single letter would have protected the company, but there seems to be no pattern of the other names being meant to parody anyone in particular.

    The popular opinion of the courts seems to be that celebrities have fairly well-established rights to the commercial misuse of their names and likenesses, so it would seem at first glance to be a valid case. Legally speaking, anyway. I have a feeling the toy has already been pulled from Hasbro's site in preparation for renaming it. The third-party sellers on Amazon have it priced at $60+, maybe already trying to take advantage of the idea that it will soon be a rare collectors' item.

    --
    ¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
    ... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Non Sequor on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:53AM

      by Non Sequor (1005) on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:53AM (#231665) Journal

      An employee must have had a brain fart and used a name they had heard on TV and forgot that they had heard it rather than coming up with it themselves.

      For TV shows, don't they have the legal department clear character names to protect against this? Even if the use of the name is defensible, it's generally preferable to not get sued in the first place.

      --
      Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
      • (Score: 2) by tempest on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:45PM

        by tempest (3050) on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:45PM (#231775)

        I'd think they'd still run the names through a search engine. The fallout if they accidentally had a toy named after an ax murder or something is worth the effort to make sure the name isn't associated with anything (bad or good).

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Thursday September 03 2015, @03:59PM

          by AnonymousCowardNoMore (5416) on Thursday September 03 2015, @03:59PM (#231814)

          Pick a random given name + family name combination. Make sure it isn't offensive (e.g. Mike Hunt) or outright weird, or something that would sound alien to your target market (unless it has some intentional foreign ethnicity). Chances are—whatever you chose—someone with that name will be unhappy.

      • (Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday September 03 2015, @04:16PM

        by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Thursday September 03 2015, @04:16PM (#231829)

        The funny thing is, the name appears to have been successfully trademarked. So I presume no one at Hasbro legal OR the trademarking office heard of Google.

        Or, I suppose, Ms. Faulkner is not a tenth as famous as she thinks she is, and when they Googled it her results didn't stand out from baby name lists and some kid named Harris writing a book report on "Absalom, Absalom!"

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by CirclesInSand on Friday September 04 2015, @01:07AM

          by CirclesInSand (2899) on Friday September 04 2015, @01:07AM (#232066)

          Trademark only extends to the scope of the industry. Their legal department would only have to check if there were other toys with that name. They don't have to check if there are other people, airlines, flute manufacturers, or shoe makers.

          • (Score: 3, Touché) by Bogsnoticus on Friday September 04 2015, @04:51AM

            by Bogsnoticus (3982) on Friday September 04 2015, @04:51AM (#232131)

            Given how much of Faux News is a joke, and thus should be used for entertainment purposes only, I think the trademark would extend across to the toy.

            --
            Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by korla_plankton on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:47AM

    by korla_plankton (1597) on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:47AM (#231662)

    'wilfully and wrongfully appropriated Faulkner's unique and valuable name and distinctive persona for its own financial gain'

    Because all the little kids who watch fox news are of course going to want a doll of their favourite personality.

    Hmm that sounded more like sarcasm in my head...

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Gravis on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:48AM

    by Gravis (4596) on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:48AM (#231663)

    it seems to me that if the character was named after the lady that it should be covered by fair use as it should be considered parody. it doesn't seem like there is a real case here at all.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @12:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @12:35PM (#231694)

    I know this doesn't add anything to the discussion, so mod me down, but what 'effing ever who gives a sh*t.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @12:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @12:58PM (#231705)

    And package it with another one named "The Trump" and it will sell millions. Perhaps add an accessory, like a Tampon.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by shipofgold on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:49PM

    by shipofgold (4696) on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:49PM (#231728)

    Not being a regular viewer of Fox News I have never heard of Ms. Faulkner....now I have.

    If there are 20 people in the world who made the connection between that toy and her, I would be surprised.

    This one smacks of headline grabbing.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:59PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 03 2015, @01:59PM (#231735) Journal

      LOL, I wouldn't have known who she was, either.

      But, you're probably understimating. I'll bet there are between 50 and 60 people who could have made that connection. At least 40 of them are rabid right wingers, so it shouldn't have mattered anyway.

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Thursday September 03 2015, @04:08PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 03 2015, @04:08PM (#231821) Journal
      If she plays her cards right, they may still be digging up these toys throughout the galaxy billions of years in the future. Sure, most will probably look like turds, but it's cheap immortality, if you can get it going.