Open Letter to Leo Burnett UK | Hacker News Reader

Open Letter to Leo Burnett UK

asylumfilms.co.uk

64 pointskristianc33 comments

Leo Burnett response here http://blog.leoburnett.co.uk/our-views/rmhc-gate/

TL;DR - Original concept and script were supposedly Leo Burnett's.

However the Asylum Films complaint isn't around the concept or script being copied/stolen. They complain that the company that re-shot the higher budget version essentially copied/stole much of their creative work: lighting, shots, etc...

But surely when you do work for a client, they own the IP, not you?

If I was a logo designer and designed a logo for BigCorp, then they wanted to revise it a year later to something similar but different, would I be justified in complaining they 'stole and copied my creative work'?

They own the finished product, but honestly it's really frowned upon to a do a bigger budget version and lift lighting and shooting setups (or at least in photography, I'd imagine videography runs on the same rails).

It's all supposed to be in the contract. If it's not, then the most likely court scenario is that the IP is owned by the client, creator would have rights to display it, but their work would be considered a service.

That depends entirely on the specific contract and the jurisdiction. There's no automatic assumption of copyright transfer in the UK, what you have is an implied license to use (normally). It's quite possible you would be justified, although I'd take issue with the word "stole".

That may be the case, but I'd put "concept + script" in the same bucket as "high-level spec" - in other words, not really believable when the end results look like direct clones.

If Leo Burnett had said they did storyboards, set design etc., it would be more convincing.

Having read both sides of the story, I don't understand why Asylum is butthurt about this.

They got paid by Leo Burnett to do a scene which both parties collaborated. However, as part of the contract and as the client to Asylum, Leo Burnett probably owns the creative so they are free to do whatever they want afterwards. It's not unlike a startup asking a designer to visually revamp their entire site: the designer may have come up with the creative but the client technically owns it.

Afterwards, Leo Burnett's client (McDonalds) decided that they liked it so much they wanted a reshoot with higher production quality, so LB opted to reshoot it with a more expensive production company.

I think it's because Asylum were told (or assumed) that the prestige of the client would be available to them once the work has been released. Asylum would be able to take credit for the work by featuring it in their portfolio. Now they're just the guys who shot the "prototype" rather than the real thing. In creative work it's common for the commissioner to invite the agency to "think of the prestige!" when agreeing to do some heroic work for a limited budget, but it's rarely something that can be included in a contract.

That said, while it's disappointing for them, I can't see the moral issue here. If someone contracted me to write some software for them, and then they decided that they liked my implementation in Python but wanted to use a Java port in production, I don't think I'd have any grounds for complaint on moral or ethical grounds. I'd still have the money, and I'd still be able to tell people that I did work for that client, on that particular project (assuming there's no contractual bar to this).

The moral issue would come from you having been convinced to do the Python version for cheap, based on some future promise of work/fame/recognition, and then having those future promises reneged on..

You're right, there is nothing illegal about it (and welcome to the world of contracting!), but it's still a bit shitty.

That's why I believe in "work for free, or work for full price, but never work for cheap."

From the Leo Burnett response it seems they were never working for fame, they were producing an internal film that was never intended to see the light of day. The RMHC enjoyed the film so much they wanted to have the same idea transferred to a full marketing campaign.

That's happened to me in a pitch process. We did designs, the company rejected us, but then opted to use another agency that used one of our ideas. C'est la vie. That's what happens when one does spec work. But we sucked it up and ended up getting other companies anyway.

However at least in this case, Asylum got paid for their work. And I think they do themselves a disservice by airing dirty laundry out because this is just part of the business. LB decided to go with a bigger production company with a proven track record as opposed to rolling the die on Asylum again. Maybe Asylum should've just looked inward about what steps they should take next time around.

> "think of the prestige!"

I don't see how Asylum couldn't get 100% of the prestige out of this.

Imagine the next meeting Asylum could have had with a potential customer.

Potential Customer: What was your last project?

Asylum: We built the commercial for the Ronald McDonald Foundation. They liked it so much that they re-shot it frame by frame using better equipment. You can see here in this side-by-side comparison how all of our ideas stayed in effect and the second company simply came in and did some minor detail changes.

Asylum are still in the position of the -idea guys- which makes them valuable. At least it did before they decided to slam one of their customers over the internet.

As I read it LB contracted a company to build him a device. Then LB took the device home, liked it and had another company copy that device. LB owns the device, the copyright, the IP, the idea, the script, the everything. LB can do _whatever_ he wanted with the device.

It doesn't matter of LB had the idea or not. It doesn't matter if he directed or gave them a script, advice or consultation. LB asked for complete ownership of a product and he received one.

All that is left is a moral argument. Should LB have recast the movie exactly as it was created by the other company?

Well shoot. I don't know. What about when a company changes its logo, should it be a ground up change to respect the previous creator or should it be a slight tweak to the existing creation?

I do believe that this is a great example of why you don't want to air your dirty laundry on the net. People are going to make decisions, choose sides, and you can't guarantee that it will land in your favor.

I'm a little surprised Asylum are moaning about this, because their site suggests they've been around for a few years working in the ad world, and this kind of thing happens all the time.

That said, I refuse to believe LB when they say they didn't show the other production houses Asylum's original piece - it would be very unusual in advertising not to.

Right or wrong, Asylum aren't doing themselves any favours...the ad world in London is very insular, more so than the start-up world. Everybody knows everybody, and reputation is really everything (I work on the outskirts of it, so I speak from some experience).

As a product designer who occasionally does contract work for larger companies, I fail to see what the big deal is. My work is often used by my clients to inform a bigger, more expensive design that they build internally or outsource elsewhere. They hired me, they own the work, therefore they can do what they would like with it.

> they own the work

Depending on the contract. If there's no explicit copyright transfer, chances are that they don't.

It sounds from Leo Randall's blog that they took an assignment of Asylum Film's film and if this is the case, they were free to do whatever they wanted with it, including making derivative works or works substantially reproducing it.

Still, if I was Asylum, I would have definitely thought more about retaining some right of first refusal or right to tender if LR were to subsequently decide to reshoot.

Obviously hindsight is a beautiful thing though, and perhaps LR didn't want to be constrained in this way.

"I would have definitely thought more about retaining some right of first refusal or right to tender if LB were to subsequently decide to reshoot."

I don't see why they should feel entitled to this. They got paid for their work. It'd be like a startup paying me to do their front-end, them getting funded, and then them opting to take some of the work I did and expanding upon it with perhaps a bigger and more professional team.

I am suggesting that a right of first refusal etc was incorporated into any agreement with LR as a result of negotiation rather than that they felt entitled to it.

Clearly if they were retained to perform services with a specific scope which they subsequently complied with and got paid for, they should not be complaining that the client then did not use their work subsequently. This again assumes their was some form of assignment in place.

I'm pretty sure any request for right of first refusal would just be shot straight down. Bear in mind ultimately LB doesn't own the work: their client does. LB is one link in a big long outsourcing chain, which is basically how most advertising for large corporations works. You have one big agency at the top, which farms out work to smaller agencies, etc etc.

I'm inclined to agree, but I'm always interested to think about potential angles and negotiation ploys. Heck, maybe there wasn't even a written agreement in place!

AF was the contractor, they produced work, they got paid to deliver product to LB. LB didn't like it and paid more to get the concept redone. Sounds fair to me. Welcome to life.

For what it's worth, I find the Asylum version is much nicer, has more character and emotion than the "high production quality" version.

It's just a case of what they had signed. If Asylum assigned over the rights of the work to LB, they have nothing to complain about...

This seems wrong to me, and I hope it gets resolved. But why is this on HN and near the top of the main page? Definitely off topic.

Because it interests people, so they vote it up?

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

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Thanks for correcting me. I wrongly thought that flagging was for genuine spam.

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm aware of that guideline. How does a minor dispute between two companies gratify one's intellectual curiosity?

Well we get a lot of posts about copyright, client work and so on so it does seem to fit.

In regards to the "off topic" comment, I would submit that this sort of thing happens all the time in the startup community with ideas, design, code, etc. It's interesting to see how it plays out and how both parties handle it.

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