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Collection of satirical animated screensavers based on comic strip characters Opus the Penguin and Bill the Cat by artist Berkeley Breathed. Some of them contain cartoon violence and sexually suggestive humor. The initial screensaver landed the company in court as its Death Toasters module depicted Opus taking shots at a number of flying toasters, a well-known emblem in Berkeley System's Flying Toasters module from their After Dark screensaver. Berkeley Systems sued for copyright and trademark infringement. The following court case was fought by Delrina on the basis that a software-based parody should fall under the same First Amendment protection offered to the press. Judge Eugene Lynch found in favour of Berkeley, citing that a commercial software product was not subject to the same exemptions as parodist literature, and that the toasters were too similar in design. Delrina subsequently removed the wings from the toasters and replaced them with propellers in order to avoid trademark infringement. The module was also renamed from "Death Toasters" to "Censored Toaster Module". Thanks to the publicity from the court case, sales of this new version ended up being triple what had been expected. Updated modules for this particular screensaver were sold for the next couple of years. |
