from Hacker News

The inventor of the troll doll only made a sliver of the proceeds

by zaplin on 3/30/23, 7:30 AM with 29 comments

• by m-i-l on 4/1/23, 7:49 AM

  > "Dam’s company ... had filed for a US design copyright back in 1961. And in 1965, it took action in court against a company that it claimed was infringing on its trolls without proper license... The court found that Dam Things had failed to include a copyright mark on hundreds of thousands of trolls it sold. Furthermore, the copyright notice ... was invalid, as it did not explicitly name Dam’s company... Trolls, it was ruled, were in the public domain."

  Reminds me of some other stories where inventors lost out:

  - James Dewar invented the vacuum flask, but had his design patented by a company called Thermos. He took them to court and "while Dewar was recognised as the inventor, because he did not patent his invention, there was no way to prevent Thermos from using his design"[0].

  - Wilkinson Sword introduced stainless steel razor blades in 1962, but a company called Gillette "managed to patent it before Wilkinson did ... [and Wilkinson were] forced to pay royalty to Gillette for each blade it sold"[1].

  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dewar

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillette

• by bruce511 on 4/1/23, 3:03 AM

  This is an interesting counter-example to the idea that IP rights should be abandoned.

  The IP in question here would be copyright (as mentioned in the article) and these days likely trademark as well.

  He did have a copyright,but this was deemed invalid. Copies flooded the market.

  Now,of course,all (most) toys have a limited shelf life. But the clones are just in it for the money,the developer is discouraged and retreats. Further development is abandoned.

  With software there are advantages to being open, or closed, but in both cases copyright and trademarks serve to protect the project. Obviously clones, copies,fakes and forks exist,but trademarks and licensing serve to protect the original authors intentions, and the author has choices in what protection they want.

  Patents on software though such. I can't defend those.

• by shusaku on 4/1/23, 2:19 AM

  > “He modeled its ugly face after a local butcher,” his son, Neils, later told The New York Times. “My father owed this man money, and this was his revenge.”

  Alas, the butcher too failed to put the proper copyright notice on his face

• by folli on 4/1/23, 4:37 AM

  > His timing was perfect: Many of the same people who had played with trolls during the first wave now had kids of their own.

  So I guess we're ripe for a third wave of troll craze...

• by ShadowBanThis01 on 4/1/23, 12:04 AM

  I remember the whole "trolls" fad as only the pencil-topper things from the '80s, not '90s or later. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  Had no idea they dated back to the '60s.

• by moxvallix on 4/1/23, 1:20 AM

  Maybe this is just a safari thing, but does anyone else see <strong> tags in the title of this article?

• by eyelidlessness on 4/1/23, 7:36 AM

  The original title as posted was closer in wording to the actual article’s title. The edit feels more provocative (er, “clickbait” is the local term) than unedited.

• by nightfly on 4/1/23, 1:30 AM

  Meta: why is paxcoders comment dead? It's a reasonably accurate tldr and isn't inflammatory or off topic.

• by pibechorro on 4/1/23, 12:21 PM

  As do most artist..

• by paxcoder on 3/31/23, 11:57 PM

  TL;DR Didn't put a proper copyright on the dolls and - I reckon because there was no Berne convention at the time - copycats flooded the market