Sony Finds Itself In Court After Bullying Film Studio Over Supposed 'Slender Man' Copyright Infringement

Sony Finds Itself In Court After Bullying Film Studio Over Supposed 'Slender Man' Copyright Infringement

6 years ago
Anonymous $oIHRkISgaL

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180727/12534340321/sony-finds-itself-court-after-bullying-film-studio-over-supposed-slender-man-copyright-infringement.shtml

The last time we discussed Slender Man on this site, it was when two young girls stabbed their friend and blamed it on this internet ghost story, leading to the site Creepypasta feeling it needed to remind everyone that fiction is fiction and not the writings of a Satanic cult. Only briefly discussed in those writings was the origin of the Slender Man meme, which started as a Lovecraftian ghost story on the Something Awful forums by Eric Knudsen, who produced two photoshopped images of people being stalked by a faceless slender creep-bomb and added some fake quotations to make something of a story out of them. From those two photos and brief captions, the internet essentially took over, building entire stories and lore around Slender Man to the point where the whole thing is a wildly popular internet meme and ghost story staple.

So of course Sony Pictures bought the rights to the story from Knudsen and will now presumably ruin it all in a major motion picture. And that would be only mildly irritating, except Sony is also trying to bully a smaller studio, Phame Factory, out of producing its own horror movie, claiming it now has the copyright and trademark rights for Slender Man. This has resulted in Phame Factory suing Sony to get a court to declare its work not infringing.