Kirby IMAX Delauter
Trademark is almost as screwed up as Copyright.
It almost as if the lawyers of the corporations are stuck in a weird feedback loop with the courts they imagine they’ll need to appear before in case of an actual trademark violation.
I wonder what the rate of false-positives is on this subject.
Trademark at least has a fairly simple, arguably (mostly) easy to separate from the chaff, core of ‘this is basically a good idea’: it is forbidden to use some other entity’s name or product name to mislead people during the course of business. All the companies who pretend that ‘trademark’ = ‘veto power in all contexts’ need to DIAF; but it’s pretty much just a ‘no fraud, now’ thing.
Copyright has a certain noble impulse, to discourage waste and loss through secrecy and encourage R&D; but disentangling its noble ideals from the consequences of any implementation of them we’ve been able to manage has been…hairy…at best.
In this case, IMAX falls straight into the ‘need to DIAF’ category, with extra demerits for how egregiously they’ve soiled their own allegedly precious trademark. It’s gotten to the point where ‘IMAX*’ apparently can mean ‘more or less ordinary maldesigned and apathetic big box theater; but with some proprietary codec used somewhere, and wired with Monster Cables’ or something very close to it. Of course, the ticket is still priced as though a giant curved screen and heroic infrastructure are involved…
That header graphic. Fuck you, I’ll never get all this coffee out of my keyboard.
the looming genericide that brands such as imax suffer from.
I see what you did there.
I find the Heinz image interesting…
I think IMAX had to water down it’s “experience”. It’s like high end fine dinning, in NC - one that’s probably not a real thing, and two when your bill (excluding alcohol) starts to exceed $150-$200 for a couple that’s considered expensive by most people. Compare that to your highly urban areas, NY or LA…it seems almost comical in a way.
I look at IMAX the same way. There is a local theater with an IMAX setup, and it’s not bad. It’s bigger than the normal screens (which I feel are 30% smaller than 20 years ago, but whatever) and the key thing for me is it is brighter in 3D. So if want to see 3D it’s IMAX, or it’s 2D.
Interesting article about shrinking IMAX screens: http://www.lfexaminer.com/20100421shrinking-imax-screens.htm
The stupid part is that IMAX has a point. Big speakers all around do sound different from earbuds, and there’s much to be said for peripheral vision. But when they make their point into a threat, the lawyers become the story instead of the product. Has that ever happened, without being a sign of the end?
Brutal anal sex, eh? Well played Heinz.
I bought IMAX at 2, and sold it at 7 (around the time the smaller screens were catching on). Now it is at 43. I don’t understand it, but the new screens seem to be working for the company.
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