Luxo Sues Disney/Pixar Over Animated Lamp
Norwegian Company Says Pixar's Logo Violates Copyright
Sep 8, 2009
A Disney promotional item has destroyed a longstanding relationship between CGI powerhouse Pixar and Norwegian lamp company Luxo: after 23 years of allowing Pixar to use a CGI sequence of the company's iconic lamp in its promotional material, Luxo is suing Disney and Pixar for copyright infringement.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Luxo filed suit in New York Federal Court on September 3rd, accusing both Disney and Pixar of infringing on its copyright. According to Luxo, Disney has packaged a limited-edition "Luxo Jr." lamp with Blu-ray copies of the Disney/Pixar blockbuster Up. Luxo's lawyers also objected to a new attraction at Walt Disney World that features a six-foot animatronic version of the lamp.
According to the suit, Disney's use of Luxo Jr. in its promotional items could "cause devastating damage to Luxo and dilute the goodwill which Luxo has built up." The Oslo-based company claims to have sold more than 25 million Luxo lamps since its creation in 1939.
Luxo and Pixar's Agreement over Use of "Luxo Jr." Lamp in Short Film and Promotional Material
In 1986, Pixar co-founder John Lasseter used his own Luxo lamp as inspiration for the Oscar-nominated CGI animated short "Luxo Jr.", which featured a miniature version of the lamp playing with a rubber ball.
Here's the full story according to Cartoon Brew's Amid Amidi's book The Art of Pixar Short Films:
"The success of "Luxo Jr." caused one unanticipated problem: Pixar had used the name of a trademarked product without permission. This misstep was hastily corrected by Ralph Guggenheim, a veteran of NYIT and Lucasfilm, for which he headed the development of Lucas’s EditDroid editing system.
"Guggenheim, who joined Pixar’s animation group around the time "Luxo Jr." premiered at SIGGRAPH, immediately contacted Jac Jacobsen Industries to clear the use of the name. Computer animation was so new that Luxo representatives could not even understand what Pixar had done.
“They thought we had taken two of their lamps and animated them by hand in stop-motion,” said Guggenheim. The notion of computer animation was still unfathomable for most of the public. Ultimately, Pixar and Luxo reached an agreement in which Luxo could screen the film at its own trade shows and Pixar could distribute the film without restraint."
As the star of Pixar's first animated short, the character of Luxo Jr. became so integral to the company's image that an animated short featuring the tiny lamp preceded every Pixar feature film from 1995's Toy Story to this year's Up.
Part of the agreement between Luxo and Pixar was that Pixar couldn't actually use the name Luxo Jr. in any of its promotional material. This is the agreement that Luxo claims Disney violated with its special edition Luxo Jr. lamp.
As of this writing, Disney representatives have not seen the complaint and could not comment on it.
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