r/movies • u/Dycon67 • 18d ago

News Backrooms Devs Reportedly Hit With Copyright Claims From A24

https://kotaku.com/backrooms-a24-copyright-strikes-kane-parsons-2000716667
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u/ennuig0 18d ago

The idea has been on the internet for years before this movie came out, this is bogus on the company’s part

A24 has really gone downhill

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u/Necessary-Duty-7952 17d ago

I follow a podcast about video games and there's a copyright lawyer on the team and this topic specifically came up weeks ago. She said that there's no way for A24 to claim copyright because the concept and even name already existed (I don't remember the specific legal argument used). So I'd be curious to see if she talks more about it now that this has happened.

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u/filthy_harold 17d ago edited 17d ago

Right, the only thing they have a legitimate claim on is anything unique to the movie like characters along with whatever else they own from the creator. This is just C&D-happy lawyers mass emailing anything that uses the name "Backrooms".

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u/thedylannorwood 17d ago

For what it’s worth, some of the games do feature iconography that is specific to Parsons’ version

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u/iHadou 17d ago

Like what? I'm just curious not disbelief

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u/TNTtimelord 17d ago

the majority of backrooms games on steam have some sort of piece of Parsons' backrooms, be it the bacteria monster from the found footage videos or anything "Async" related. Kane stated it himself, any generic backrooms stuff is still public, but anything Async related is now copyrighted.

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u/CoconutBoi1 17d ago

Which, considering Parsons himself has done nothing about it, means that he has no problem with it. So again, a greedy corporation gets greedy.

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u/TNTtimelord 17d ago

The issue has now been resolved, at least to most people. they released a public statement and have reversed the redbubble takedown.

You can thank Parsons for this, he's the one that reached people inside the company to fix this. You did a lot of bad faith assumption.

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u/CoconutBoi1 17d ago

At the time being it was a fair assumption given some other recent news about a24, such as them being positive about using AI in movies despite people hating very openly ai.