Star Wars creator George Lucas in court battle over film replicas

THE Star Wars film empire struck back yesterday against one of the originators of the Stormtroopers.

Prop designer Andrew Ainsworth, who helped manufacture the helmets and suits for the first film in 1977, now sells replicas from his studio in London.

George Lucas, the creator of the sci-fi series, tried to stop him last year in a multimillion-pound battle at the High Court.

But a judge ruled that the suits were not covered by copyright law because they were not works of art and a £10 million (€11m) damages award against Ainsworth in the US could not be enforced in Britain.

Now Lucasfilm has brought an action in the Court of Appeal to try to prove that the Stormtrooper suits are sculptures and therefore works of art covered by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

Lucas’s company is also claiming an English court should allow the US court jurisdiction in cases involving internet trading, even though the trader may not have a physical presence in the foreign country.

Michael Bloch QC, representing Lucasfilm, said all the characters in the Star Wars series were conceived by Lucas.

Artists used conventional techniques such as drawing, painting and sculpting to give a visual representation for prop makers to construct the finished product.

Ainsworth produced the first Stormtrooper helmet in plastic by making a mould using a clay model formed by another prop artist.

The Stormtrooper armour was first sculpted in clay by Brian Muir, a sculptor from the production company’s art department.

Again, Ainsworth used casts taken from these models to manufacture the plastic suits, said Bloch.

When the first film was a worldwide success, Lucasfilm built up a licensing business for the manufacture of reproductions of the Stormtrooper helmets and armour.

Bloch said Ainsworth had kept the original moulds and started selling versions, with the United States being his largest market.

He said the English judge had found that Ainsworth had a defence to breach of copyright because he held that the Stormtroopers were not works of art.

“The question arising on this appeal concerns the scope and meaning of sculpture for the purposes of the act,” Bloch said.

The case continues.