News

Alfonso Ribeiro Legal Case Flops As He Doesn’t Own ‘The Carlton’

The Carlton Dance

You may recall reading back in December that the Fresh Prince Of Bel Air star, Alfonso Ribeiro, was suing Epic Games over what he felt was an unauthorised use of his ‘Carlton Dance’. A rather humorous dance move/display he made famous in the show. At the time, this wasn’t the first ‘dance lawsuit’ aimed at Epic Games, but it didn’t stop it being treated with bewilderment.

It seems, however, that his legal work may not have been entirely up to scratch. You see, despite issuing the lawsuit, he didn’t technically own the rights to it. It does, however, get worse. After he did apply for the copyright to the dance, in a report via PCGamesN, the US Copyrights office has refused his application.

So what does this mean? Well, essentially, it means that his legal case has fallen completely flat at the first hurdle.

Why Was The Copyright Rejected?

Well, from this point on things get a bit complicated. You can (apparently) copyright a choreographed piece of dance work. The office, however, does not consider the ‘dance’ to fall in this category. They instead feel that it is instead simply a dance made up of 3 basic moves. In other words, it’s a compilation rather than an outright dance.

Saskia Florence from the Copyright Office’s Performing Arts Division has said: “the combination of these three dance steps is a simple routine that is not registrable as a choreographic work.” – The fear is that if copyright was granted for this ‘dance’ it would potentially allow people to copyright any form of body movement. In fairness, I do get that point. It’d be like the army trying to copyright the salute and suing any civilian who did it without their permission.

So, as much as I love you Alfonso Ribeiro, I think this frivolous lawsuit has come to the acrimonious end it thoroughly deserved.

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!

Mike Sanders

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

November Xbox Game Pass Games Revealed

We've finally reached the month of November, and that means one thing for Xbox users:…

23 mins ago

PS5 Pro Enhanced Games List Revealed

For those who haven't had it on their radar, this week we take a new…

33 mins ago

MSI Overclocker Pushes Kingston Fury Renegade RAM to Record-Breaking 12,196 MT/s

An overclocker from the MSI team has managed to push the Kingston Fury Renegade CUDIMM…

1 hour ago

NVIDIA Pushes SK Hynix to Accelerate HBM4 Production

It seems that NVIDIA wants to launch its next products ahead of time. We are…

1 hour ago

ASUS Unveils New TUF Gaming A2 SSD Enclosure with Enhanced Durability and Speed

The trend of upgrading storage from traditional hard drives to SSDs has become increasingly popular,…

2 hours ago

BenQ MOBIUZ EX2710Q 27″ QHD 165Hz 1ms, HDRi IPS Gaming Monitor

SpeakersSpeakersYesSpeaker amount and power output2x 2 WattDimensionsLength / Depth252.5 mmWidth614 mmHeight525.8 mmWeight7.4 kgStandards / SpecificationsAdaptive…

5 hours ago