The tiny, detailed, 3-D printed Iron Throne iPhone dock is no more, thanks to a cease-and-desist letter from HBO, which owns the rights to the Game of Thrones series.
Fernando Sosa, who modeled the throne in Autodesk Maya based on still images from the series, began selling it beside other 3-D printed sculptures on his site, nuPROTO.com. But while it was still in pre-order, HBO found out.
"I guess it kind of snowballed in publicity," says Sosa. "I didn't think it would get this big. And all of a sudden, we got a letter from HBO."
That letter told him to knock it off, asserting rights not just to the series or the throne, but to replicas inspired by it.
"While we appreciate the enthusiasm for the Series that appears to have inspired your creation of this device, we are also concerned that your iron throne dock will infringe on HBO's copyright in the Iron Throne," says the letter.
So Sosa went back to HBO and inquired about licensing. Impossible, said the company, because they'd licensed the idea for a throne iPhone dock to somebody else. HBO wouldn't say who, and wouldn't allow Sosa to contact them about sharing the design.
"We were suspicious," he says. "It's kind of weird, because I think it's a really unique idea, for somebody to already have licensed it, and somebody else already working on it, it's pretty suspicious."
"That throne, it took me months to make," he says. "I modeled every sword, it was really a lot of work."
HBO did not respond to a request for comment by press time. Update: HBO Vice President of Corporate Affairs Jeff Cusson calls it a "pretty straightforward intellectual property infringement."
"Especially with a show like Game of Thrones, the amount of product licensed around that is exorbitant," he says, adding that he's not sure of the specifics around another licensed throne dock.
So while the legal future of 3-D printing, especially where copyrights and patents are involved remains somewhat unclear, it's clear that HBO considers a replica — at least, when sold — to be within its intellectual property rights, so much so that the company demanded Sosa remove all hints of the throne from both his website and the Instructables page where he described its creation.
Sosa and his business partner Mike Bauerlein acknowledge that, while they didn't realize it would be a copyright issue, they did make their product too similar to HBO's throne. To get around the mess, Sosa says he's working on another project, one that's hopefully different enough to avoid HBO's wrath: a "Throne of War" that will feature all sorts of weapons, from Tommy guns to rocket launchers.
"Fine, you don't want us to work with your throne, we'll make something cool, we'll make something better," he says.
