Recently, it was revealed that the monopoly on "Eleanor", the 1967 Mustang Fastback, has finally been broken, after the judge pointed out the litigant committed perjury and tried to attribute human qualities to a car so they can claim copyright over something they don't own. However, the story is extremely complicated,
To get this story right, we have to start from the beginning, of a movie called "Gone in 60 Seconds", released back in 1974 by H.B. Halicki. You can see the "original" hero car, A 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1, here, named Eleanor.
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| The hero car from Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) |
(and here's the actual vehicle as stored in Petersen Automotive Museum )
The car also appeared in two other H B Halicki movies: The Junkman and Deadline Auto Theft. Though these two movies are made with a lot of footage recycled from the first Gone in 60 Seconds.
The Eleanor in the 2000 movie was a 1967 Mustang GT500 redesigned by Chip Foose and Steve Sanford. It looks nothing like the vehicle above, as you can see here. The only thing they have in common is they are both Ford Mustangs, that's it.
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| 1967 Mustang GT500 "Eleanor" as seen in "Gone in 60 Seconds (2000)" |
Unfortunately, the fact that this vehicle is NOTHING like the original 1974 Eleanor did not deter Denise Halicki and her "Eleanor Licensing" from harassing ANYBODY who tried to make a car that looks similar to the "new" Eleanor. Remember, this vehicle has nothing to do with Halicki other than it was named Eleanor in an authorized 2000 remake of the 1974 movie. Somehow, Denise Halicki and her company believed this is enough for her to claim the design as their own...
Technically speaking, Denise Halicki knew the remake will feature a different car, and she didn't trademark THAT car, when she authorized the remake in 1995. The movie finally came out in 2000. Shelby trademarked the Eleanor Mustang in 2002. THEN Halicki sued in 2004 claiming the trademark belongs to her, and it was awarded to her in 2008 by US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Between then and now, Halicki's Eleanor Licensing and its lawyers claimed that ANY car named Eleanor without their blessing is illegal. The crisis reached a boiling point in 2020 when Youtube Channel "B stands for Build" tried to build a new Eleanor by grafting a 1967 Mustang body onto a modern Mustang platform. The Youtuber was forced to pull his entire 14-video series documenting the build from Youtube, but also had his partially built car SEIZED.
In fact, Halicki's lawyers went as far as threaten to sue or have sued ANYONE who made a Ford Mustang GT500 that even remotely looked similar to the Chip Foose / Steve Sanford design above, the car she had no rights to even if it's NOT called Eleanor! They were called GT500E, and GT500CR respectively. Then they had the temerity to send letters to the auction houses and owners, warning them to NOT sell those unless they want to be sued as well! (Yes, this was all in the court paper, which will be linked below)
Even Shelby Licensing / Shelby Trust had enough and they sued to have the previous ruling reversed, and in December 2022, they finally prevailed. A judge watched all relevant movies, and ruled that the car CANNOT be a character and thus does not deserve the copyright protection that was granted by previous courts, because, in short, the Halicki lawyers lied to the court. The decision can be read here.
I won't go into details, you can have Steve Lehto explain that to you.
But I'll include a juicy quote:
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| "unfortunate practice on the part of the Halicki Parties to embellish facts in their briefing [to the court]." |
Ouch, what a smackdown.
Does that mean people now can build their own versions of Eleanor? Seems to be "yes".
Will this stop Denise and her lawyers? Unlikely. They *can* appeal. The question is will they?
