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Hello everyone. As i Cinevent attendee for many years my interest have deepend even further now. I buy & sell glass slides but have now been informed of something that i feel is right & wrong and need as many opinions & factual statements of legal issues there can be from others here who have been around the movie collectible market.

This has to do with restoring glass movie slides (YES THE ONES IN THE BROWN CARDBOARD FRAMES).

Recently i ran into someone who restores the glass slide & he is a really good artist of which i give him credit. People restore many things. The issue of concern though is he now reprints the cardboard frames and ink stamps all of the original information on the new repro cardboard frame also. There is nothing mentioning of this being a reprint and his are so good the average person would not know. The trademarked & copyrighted film title & company that made it as well as any other printing on the original cardboard mount is matched to the new cardboard mount and then the slide is inserted & re-stapled. So basically nobody from the film company nor the rights holder if applicable gave any permission to reprint their names.

On the restoring of the glass slide i guess would be like restoring a movie poster. As long as it is disclosed that is ok but my question is:

"How legal can it be" for someone to do knockoffs of an original cardboard mount from like a Frankenstein movie or something even like a Paramount movie where there are many names, dates, printed info etc being reproduced without permission where these would eventually get back into the marketplace where the consumer would not know or be told it is not original.

My other concern is this will obviously ruin the glass movie slide market. The only positive i can see out of this is for the archive/museum/exhibitionist who wants a perfect slide to show or display or to protect the heritage of the film industry for the future.

Please respond here if possible as to what you may know & thoughts on this topic. I would appreciatte any posts!

Thanks

Like anything, I think that if people want something there will always be a market for it. I can't see how making reproductions of the cardboard frames can be illeagal since I'm sure the company that made them is long gone and probably the patent, too.

I have a few of these slides and FOR ME I like the patina that is from the vintage slide and a new one would look just too odd for me.

I can understand that restoration is ok to a legal extent. Companies like Paramount though or films like Frankenstein or Dracula and then the Chaplin group i can't see how they would allow something like that to be reprinted without royalties or a legal agreement. When you buy a film that is restored or a movie poster, isnt that normally disclosed? Also i am thinking there would have to be a value difference between an original & a copy.

Thanks for reply!

Well, yes, there would certainly be a value difference betwwen an original and a reprinting and like I said I prefer the original.

Look on the internet and there are tons of places that sell repro movie posters. I doubt that there are any trouble with the older titles but if you're pirating X-Men or Star Wars posters you might have a problem with the authorities.

You said you were at Cinevent, well there was a dealer there who was selling nothing but lobby card reproductions. I don't know who buys them but there must be an audience out there somewhere.

Legally copyright and trademark are very different so let's consider each in turn.

Copyright at the time glass slides were made was much more strict regarding formalaties than it is today. That means if the slides weren't properly marked with a copyright notice, weren't registered, or weren't renewed, then those slides don't have any copyright protection.

Trademarks are about identifying the source of the goods. You can use trademarks as long as you don't do it in a way that is likely to confuse a consumer as to the source of the goods. There are some special rules for famous trademarks, and some that you mention probably qualify as such, but that is too involved for an off the cuff analysis.

Finally, despite those FBI warnings on DVDs, copyright and trademark infringement are generally pursued as a civil matter. That means there needs to be a copyright or trademark owner who wants to spend the money to try to enforce their rights.

It seems unlikely that anyone is going to stop a seller of reproduction glass slides.

As for your business, my suggestion would be to clearly advertise that you offer original slides not reproductions like some of your competitors. An informed consumer is your best defense.

Appreciate the comments it is helping me in a debate on this with someone and also making me understand from the experts here from the film side of things.

As an antique dealer there would be no way without violation for someone to get away with selling knockoffs known to only themselves.

As a slide dealer i am trying to feel this out further as there are collectors & institutions that have spent $10,000's on slides and in some cases more. Looking at it from their standpoint how would they feel or what would they do if they found out this person's stuff they bought was not real 100% from back in the day? I know i'd be pretty upset so i am trying to prepare myself for people asking me to appraise some things i am going to have a hard time possibly. I deal in non-movie glass slides as well and this topic has never come up before to anyone i know or have asked but the few people i discussed it with were shocked. A lot of people have been burned from restored movie posters they didnt know were fixed and from the slide standpoint i'd hate to see anyone have that happen to them.

I realize this thread is a little old, but hopefully it still has a little life to it. Recently I purchased a coming attraction slide (The Good Earth) on eBay and while on the surface it seems authentic, the weight is surprisingly light. The cardboard frame appears original (aged cardboard, rusted staples, etc.) but the "glass" image itself feels suspiciously like Plexiglas. I haven't tried scratching the image (yet) to test the material, but the simple heft of the slide is much less than others in my collection.

Checking Wikipedia, it appears that the first commercial applications for Plexiglass were in 1936 and The Good Earth was released in 1937 so it's conceivable that the slide is both Plexiglass AND authentic, but for some reason I can't help feeling that what I have is a reproduction.

I would dearly appreciate any advice, experience, or guidance that one of you more experienced collectors could provide.

Many thanks!

Hmmmm, I would have to see it in person. I have a bunch from the silent era that are much heavier than the ones from the 30's, so maybe it's just a lighter glass? Are the auction images still up?

I made the purchase about 4 months ago, so eBay no longer has the listing. I could email a scan though.

One thing you said got me thinking though, I wonder if the glass in the earlier slides contains more lead than in later years. Perhaps that could account for the difference. I have to admit that it seems unlikely that it would be economically worthwhile to counterfeit these slides, so maybe the glass formulation is just that different.

To compare, the slide in question weighs in at 0.75 oz on my postal scale, while an earlier glass slide (1916) is a full 2 ounces.

As a sideline I've been doing some research on these slides, maybe I need to add weight to the metadata that I'm collecting

I started to randomly purchase slides from the Arliss films on ebay about a year or so ago. Then slides for other 20s and 30s films caught my eye because of the artwork. Now I see that some of the poster repro sellers are offering poster-sized editions of what are obviously glass slides.

I don't have a glass slide projector and I'm puzzled how to even display them, say, in a shadow box. How do other glass slide collectors display their collections?

Scan 'em and put 'em on my blog:

http://www.elbrendel.com/2010/01/glass- ... or-10.html
http://www.elbrendel.com/2009/08/more-g ... -busy.html
http://www.elbrendel.com/2009/06/glass- ... -time.html
http://www.elbrendel.com/2009/04/glass- ... -what.html
http://www.elbrendel.com/2009/02/even-m ... lides.html
http://www.elbrendel.com/2009/01/glass- ... -2009.html
http://www.elbrendel.com/2008/11/glass- ... films.html
http://www.elbrendel.com/2008/10/glass- ... lides.html

Wow! Your scans are beautiful. Can you share your scanning technique?

I bought a Epson V700 and these are the results. Not much tweeking was done to any of these. It's what I use for all my scans on my site.

bobfells wrote:I don't have a glass slide projector and I'm puzzled how to even display them, say, in a shadow box. How do other glass slide collectors display their collections?

A friend of mine has a large collection and displays them on a lightbox.

rudyfan wrote:A friend of mine has a large collection and displays them on a lightbox.

WOO-HOO! Hockey!

Although I wouldn't recommend putting them in direct sunlight, I've heard of someone who has them displayed in a stained glass window manner. I presume they are in front of a large home made light box.

BTW, every now and then I'll see a crate of glass slides. Mostly fraternal lodge or foreign country Keystone views. None ever had have a script to go with them. I was lucky to have found two religious subjects with their scripts. Real nice.

FYI, the landmark case relevant to all of this is Fox V. Dastar, in which the Supreme Court ruled that trademarks are nullified in public domain materials.

Jack, in my opinion Dastar may or may not answer the questions being asked. I think this quote in the Dastar opinion is a good summary of what Dastar holds: "once the patent or copyright monopoly has expired, the public may use the invention or work at will and without attribution."

Fox was asserting that Dastar violated their trademark rights by producing a video that used Fox materials that had fallen into the public domain without providing any attribution to the the original work. The Supreme Court ruled that once a work is in the public domain, trademark law cannot be used to force a user of the PD work to attribute the work to the original author.

According to Dastar, I can publish a copy of Hamlet without including notice that it was written by Shakespeare. Dastar does not say that I can publish a copy of Hamlet and pass it off as an original first edition.

Shakespeare's right of attribution as the author was only protected by copyright and, during the time the work was so protected, Shakespeare could make attribution a condition of giving permission to publish the work. Shakespeare never had a trademark right that protected his right to be identified as the author.

Shakespeare would have a right to prevent someone else from passing off their own work as that of Shakespeare (hear that Roger Bacon?) although I am not sure if that would be under a trademark theory (in the US) or some other form of unfair competition. He could also prevent someone else from passing off his work as their own.

I would be prevented from publishing a new copy of Hamlet and passing it off as an original first edition under some form of consumer protection law or perhaps an unfair competition theory, probably depending on who got upset enough to take action against me. If a consumer or consumer protection agency took action, then it would be a consumer protection law that prevents misrepresentation of goods sold. If a competitor felt injured because I was cutting into their market for real first editions or for reproductions that were marketed as such, then it would be an unfair competition law because I would be competing unfairly by selling a fake first edition or an unmarked reproduction, depending on how the competitor was being injured by my actions.

The real bottom line is that none of these rights and legal prohibitions mean anything unless someone wants to take the matter to court. There is essentially a 0% chance that a district attorney is going to take up anything related to fake glass slides as a criminal matter. The cost to pursue this as a civil matter would be significant, a minimum of tens of thousands of dollars to the sky's the limit (as was probably the case for Dastar and Fox) in the US. So that probably means that there is close to a 0% chance of fake glass slides being pursued civally as well.

Regarding displaying glass slides, are there any non-custom made light boxes or similar deals that you don't have to buld or customize yourself to display glass slides?

I have five Constance Talmadge slides that I received in damaged condition, ranging from one thin long crack to badly crunched. I don't feel confident about repairing them. Is there a collector on this board who would be willing to accept these for free and make them "viewable" again? Or knows of an institution that would eventually restore them. I don't expect them back, of course. It would be a shame for them to just sit in a box in pieces. Thanks for any ideas.

I'm afraid that I can't repair them for you, BUT I have had very good success with doing high resolution scans (2400dpi) and digitally repairing the damage so that at least you have a nice clean image to enjoy. I would be happy to help you with this if you're interested.

Meanwhile, allow me to give my new website a plug (www.starts-thursday.com) devoted entirely to coming attraction slides.