P5(c)Legal and ethical issues

Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country, that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution, usually for a limited time, with the intention of enabling the creator (e.g. the photographer of a photograph or the author of a book) to receive compensation for their intellectual effort. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright)




Transformers and all associated names are registered trademarks of Hasbro and TakaraTomy.

Royalty

A royalty (sometimes, running royalties, or private sector taxes) is a usage-based payment made by one party (the "licensee") to another (the "licensor") for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property (IP). Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or a fixed price per unit sold of an item of such, but there are also other modes and metrics of compensation. A royalty interest is the right to collect a stream of future royalty payments, often used in the oil and music industries to describe a percentage ownership of future production or revenues from a given leasehold, which may be divested from the original owner of the asset.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalties)

Relevent Legal or Ethical Issues

Legal and ethical issues include any copying or stealing of ideas or images and using them in a film. This is wrong from both legal and ethical standpoints.

DreamWorks and affiliated media companies purchased the rights to the Transformers franchise so that they could legally and ethically make the movies. However, they ran into other problems when trying to make the toy versions of their transformers. For example, “Bumblebee,” an important transformer in the movie, was unavailable for Hasbro to use as a toy name for many years because another toy company had trademarked the name for one of their toys. This was also the case for “Bluestreak,” “Hot Rod,” “Shockwave,” “Ravage,” and “Sideswipe” for varying reasons. Although the names could be used in the movies, they could not be marketed as toys because of trademark and copyright laws, which protects one company’s right to names, images, designs, sounds and more.