For those of you wondering why the Indoctrinate U website was down for much of November, The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal website ran a statement from director Evan Coyne Maloney:
Early in November, On The Fence Films received a letter from an attorney representing Indiana University. The letter stated that university was claiming that aportion of the logo used for "Indoctrinate U" looked similar to the university's logo.From a design and typographical standpoint, there were readily apparent differences between our graphics and the university's logo. There is also no likelihood of consumer confusion because our product is a film whereas theirs is four years in Bloomington. We're in totally different markets.
But in an act of good faith, we voluntarily took the Indoctrinate-U.com site offline while we reviewed our options and decided how to proceed.
Taking down the website of a film that we've been working on for four years was painful. We got lots of e-mails from people wondering what was happening, wondering whether some school was trying to shut us down because of the content of our film.
At the time, it didn't seem like Indiana University was trying to shut us down. I disagreed with their claim, but they didn't seem like they were being vindictive. To me, it appeared that they were just going through the legal motions required by our often clumsy intellectual property laws.
So we decided against releasing the name of the university that was threatening us with legal action; naming names would have caused needless controversy and made it harder to reach a mutually-agreeable resolution to the dispute.
Even though we felt our graphics were completely defensible from a legal standpoint, we very quickly recognized that the cost of changing our graphics would have been much less than the cost of fighting the university. Besides, the graphics weren't central to the film, so going with the pure cost/benefit analysis made sense.
It took a couple of weeks to settle on a new design and change the graphics--we changed not only the web pages, but the three videos we have online, and of course the film itself--but eventually we were able to bring Indoctrinate-U.com back online.
I assumed the matter was over. We showed good faith in taking the site offline immediately and changing all the graphics even though we were not required to do so. And while we were fielding press inquiries about Indoctrinate-U.com being down, we kept quiet, we kept the university's name out of it, and we didn't try to exploit the whole thing as a public relations stunt the way a more rotund filmmaker might.
I never imagined this would become a story. We did everything that could possibly be done to address the concerns of Indiana University. So the basic story line up until now has been pretty dull: a legal letter was received and its requests were addressed quickly, end of story. That sort of thing happens thousands of times a day in this country; it's not exactly newsworthy.
Unfortunately, the university now seems to want more than just changes to some graphics. The university is now demanding we hand over a sum of money that would essentially bankrupt On The Fence Films.
I have to say, I'm a bit stunned. I understand that some academics might have a problem with our film; it covers academia's dirty little secrets. Nobody likes to be criticized. But Indiana University is not mentioned in the film at all! So their heavy-handedness seems a bit extreme.
Rather than ascribe negative motives to Indiana University, I'd rather assume it's just a matter of ignorance about our film: "Indoctrinate U" hasn't been screened within a six-hour drive of Indiana University, so perhaps their legal team is just unaware of its content. Maybe they're worried that we snuck our cameras onto campus once or twice. If that's the case, then I hope everything can be resolved by my personal assurance to the Trustees of Indiana University: you can breathe easy. Your school isn't in the film. So please... call off the dogs.
James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today" column covers the case as well.
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