I was watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and the gals were having a Great Gatsby themed party at Crystal’s house. Kathy had an alleged freak out in front of Lisa the night before and then Lisa said she was so uncomfortable that she had to leave the party early (totally just trying to start drama in my opinion). Anyway, that is beside the point, while I was watching this high-quality TV, I noticed that many of the paintings in Crystal’s house were blurred out.
After a quick google, I realized that this was because of Copyright! All those original paintings have copyright protection which arises automatically when they are created and that means the owner has the rights to how they are copied and displayed. The TV producers don’t want to risk getting sued for communicating a work to the public via telecommunication so they blur out the paintings to avoid the risk.
After realizing this I wondered why all the name brands that the cast wears were not blurred out as well. They are constantly wearing Gucci and Channel but the labels are never blurred. After googling more I learnt that trademarks are not protected in the same way as copyright. They do not exist to give companies exclusive use of the image/word and as a result, you can show them on TV and you probably won’t get sued.
Communications Law