The Academy Award of Merit is the world’s most cherished movie award, and yet few know it by its actual title. Johnny Acton reveals how the Oscars got its name

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is an honorary association of movie professionals based in Beverly Hills in California. Every year since 1929, its members (of whom there are currently some 5,000) have held secret ballots to determine the individuals deemed to have produced the best work over the previous 12 months in the various categories into which the industry divides itself. The process culminates in the most watched awards ceremony on Earth, during which winners are presented with 13.5-inch-tall gold-plated statuettes made of an alloy called britannium. They take the form of a stylised knight with a crusader’s sword standing on top of a five-spoked film reel. His official title is ‘The Academy Award of Merit’, but he is universally known as ‘Oscar’. The origin of the nickname Oscar is disputed. The most popular theory is that it derives from a remark made by Margaret Herrick, the Academy librarian during the 1930s, to the effect that the statuette reminded her of her Uncle Oscar. An alternative explanation is that Bette Davis came up with the name as a tribute to her first husband, the bandleader Harmon Oscar Nelson.

A legend in IP
Whatever its origin, the fact that the Award of Merit is generally known by a nickname has placed the Academy in an interesting position in IP terms. For several years the organisation refused to even acknowledge the alternative title. It relented in 1939, but as a result of its continuing reticence, the term ‘Oscar’ was not registered as a trademark until 1978 (US Serial Number 73,047,087).

The combination of the Awards’ high profile and the Academy’s tardiness in legally protecting the popular nickname allowed a tricky situation to develop. Throughout its existence, the organization had jealously guarded the uniqueness of the Academy Awards, but by now ‘Oscar’ had begun to enter public consciousness as a suitable term for any industry award. However, once the Academy had accepted Oscar, it became extremely vigilant in enforcing the association’s IP Rights, particularly regarding the use of the ‘Oscar’ and ‘Academy Awards’ trademarks and the Oscar statuette design mark.

Whatever its origin, the fact that the Award of Merit is generally known by a nickname has placed the Academy in an interesting position in IP terms

The Academy’s solicitors typically file as many as six or eight lawsuits a year. In 2002, for example, the Academy negotiated the withdrawal of a telephone card and an out-of-court settlement of US$41,000 from one telecoms company when the Oscar symbol was used without permission.

During the same year, the Academy brought a successful action against Pipedream Products, a gifts manufacturer that had attempted to market a ‘stud of the year’ trophy that strongly resembled Oscar but was dramatically anatomically enhanced below the waist. Websites incorporating the word ‘Oscar’ in their titles have been similarly targeted. Journalists who use the term outside its proper context can also expect a polite slap on the wrist, as Richard Ehrlich of the UK’s The Independent newspaper discovered after describing the International Wine Challenge as ‘the wine Oscars’ earlier this year. These efforts appear to be paying off. As Academy attorney David Quinto commented after the Pipedream case: ‘We’re succeeding in getting the word out that the Oscar is not a national symbol that’s available for all to use.’

Another way in which the Academy controls the image at the heart of its operation is through a standard agreement that winners must sign before their names are engraved on their trophies. It requires them not to ‘sell or otherwise dispose of’ an Oscar without first offering to sell it to the Academy for one dollar. The agreement was put into place in 1949 after an early award was sold at auction. Although Oscars awarded before this date are not subject to the same conditions, the Academy goes out of its way to ‘throw up legal impediments’ to their sale. If all else fails, it can always turn to Steven Spielberg. On two occasions, the director purchased Oscars at auction, forking out $538,000 for Bette Davis’s Best Actress award for Jezebel (1938) and $607,000 for Clark Gable’s award for It Happened One Night (1934), and promptly returned them to the Academy.


This article first appeared in IP Review, issue 17

User Comments

Post a comment