On 20 February, Jeff Bezos celebrated the purchase of the 'creative control' of the '007' film franchise with a post on Instagram in which he asked: "Who'd you pick as the next Bond?"
Four years after buying the century-old MGM film studio, which held the distribution rights to Ian Fleming's character, Amazon has acquired full dominion over the cinematic Bond, coming to an agreement with producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who sold the rights to creative control in exchange for 1.5 billion dollars.
Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are the heirs of producer Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli who, in the early 1960s, bought the film rights directly from Ian Fleming. They were then transferred to United Artists and later to MGM. Until 20 February 2025, however, Cubby Broccoli's heirs had retained creative control.
Four years after the last film in the saga, we therefore await the release of a new film starring the MI6 agent and perhaps even a spin-off series streamed by Prime Video.
However, considering the average timing of Hollywood productions, Amazon will in theory have a relatively short time to exploit the cinematic James Bond in a complete monopoly, because the copyright on the secret agent with a "licence to kill" will expire in 10 years' time.
In fact, UK copyright law, as well as EU law, stipulates that protection for creative works ends 70 years after the death of the author, and Ian Fleming died in 1964.
However, in 2035 only the original characters created by Fleming will fall into the public domain and not the creative innovations introduced in the film saga, which now define James Bond in the collective imagination. Therefore, for those who would like to venture into the production of films or TV series based on Fleming's novels, the risk of a legal dispute will not disappear, especially considering the economic interests at stake.
Certainly, a low-risk tactic for exploiting Fleming's characters is that of parody, as we have seen with the Austin Powers series or the 1967 'Casino Royale' with Peter Sellers, David Niven and Orson Wells. Indeed, parody is regarded by law as a form of freedom of expression that constitutes an exception to copyright protection. This freedom must, however, be balanced against the intellectual property rights attached to the parodied work and does not extend to discriminatory and racist uses.
A slightly different path is that of a horror adaptation, recently undertaken by British filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield, who made the slasher 'Winnie-the-Pooh – Blood and Honey' in 2023, exploiting the fact that the copyright on the famous teddy bear had expired the year before.
Complicating matters is the fact that not all intellectual property rights attached to the James Bond character are protected by copyright. In fact, the Danjaq company, founded by Albert Broccoli and now controlled by his heirs, is still the owner of numerous trademarks linked to the figure of HBM's agent, including the names 'James Bond' and '007', the Spectre symbol, the film titles and the pictogram representing the barrel of Bond's .36 calibre, the protagonist of the iconic sequence reproduced in the various films.
Since trademarks do not expire unless the owners fail to renew them or stop making effective use of them for a certain number of years, Danjaq may have secured a kind of perennial, albeit indirect, protection over the James Bond character. In practice, without Danjaq's permission, 'James Bond' cannot be used for commercial purposes.
However, Danjaq may rely on this exclusivity as long as it demonstrates effective use of its trade marks, either directly or through licensing. And it is precisely on an alleged infringement of the obligation to use the trade mark that the actions for revocation filed by the Austrian real estate developer Josef Kleindiens are based, with the aim of trying to take away Danjaq's exclusive rights to the name 'James Bond'..
The history of the film rights of the most famous spy of all time shows how laws protecting intellectual property allow the value of human creativity to be preserved and turned into a business and sometimes even a multi-billion dollar industry.
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