Elvis has left the building

My son has a big role in the school play.  He is Pharaoh in their production of Joseph.  For reasons I'm not yet clear on, he's been told to play it in the style of Elvis, complete with hip wiggle and winking at the ladies in the audience.  Not sure what Andrew Lloyd Webber would make of it all.
As I'm rather short on family, various friends have kindly agreed to come along to support the budding young actor.  Tonight is the turn of my oldest friend, who I rarely get to see, due to her jet set lifestyle (even now I can hear her laughing when she reads this).  On the few occasions that we do get together, we indulge in one of our favourite games that you can only really play properly with someone that you have known for a very long time.  The "do you remember" game.  Do you remember the time my brother got caught buying a slinky black dress and red high heeled shoes.  They were for me, in the days before I had a credit card, but I'm not sure any of his house mates believed him.   Or, do you remember going on holiday together with my parents and….. well perhaps we'd better leave that one for another time.
Last time I saw her it was, do you remember the weekend in Manchester where we spent a cold wet Saturday afternoon in the cinema watching the Jungle Book singing along and being very loud – I should point out that we were 15 and 17 respectively at the time, and far too old to be watching cartoons.  My children were incredulous – why had we gone to the cinema to see a film that had been out for years.  So we had to explain that downloads and Sky on demand didn't exist in those days.  I commented that we couldn't even rent videos as there was no video recorder to play them on.  Again more incredulity.  Why did you rent them, couldn't you just buy them like we buy DVDs now.  More explanation about how expensive videos were to buy (and how few films were available in that format due to the price) and how pirating of videos became quite big as a result.  Another round of "do you remember" ensued.  Do you remember the cringe worthy advert that used to be played at the beginning, lecturing us about how you wouldn't steal a car, so why would you copy a video?  Copyright is theft.
Which enabled me to add a new dimension to that old conversation.  I learned recently that when that advert was made, whoever made it didn't have the copyright to the piece of music that they used, leading to a huge prosecution on, yup you guessed it, breach of copyright!  Now that's irony.
I was fortunate enough to start my professional career in an entertainment law firm, being bought up on intellectual property issues.  These don't just apply to well-known adverts and big budget films, but are also relevant to people developing logos, branding and artwork. Anything can and often should be protected, but do you know how, and how much!  If this is something you'd like to know more about, let's grab a coffee and talk about our favourite films.  I'll bring the popcorn.  Drop me a line at stephanie@kleymansolicitors.com to fix something up.
Kleyman & Co Solicitors – the full service law firm.  Don't be lonesome tonight.