Ad copy: Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery, or the sincerest form of plagiarism?

Commercials are big business. A thirty-second TV spot during events like the Oscars and the Superbowl goes for millions of dollars, and a good ad can make or break a product’s reputation. Apple’s advertising is usually considered second to none, which has made the company’s spots ripe for parody and pastiche over the years—I’ll admit it; even I made a parody of the “Think Different” commercial in college. It was the ’90s; I was experimenting.

In the past couple weeks, two of Apple’s commercials have been in the spotlight. First, there was the Obama-themed take on Apple’s seminal 1984 spot. The television and movie rights holder for George Orwell’s novel, on which the ad was loosely based, spoke out on both the Obama version and the original.

“The political ad copies a prior commercial infringement of our copyright,” said [Gina Rosenblum].

Rosenblum said that over the years her company has authorized related products, including the Richard Burton movie, videos and soundtracks, but that licensing hasn’t extended to Apple’s use. […]

“When the Apple ‘Big Brother’ television commercial was aired during the 1984 Super Bowl telecast, we immediately objected to this unauthorized commercial use of the novel, and sent a ‘cease-and-desist’ letter both to Apple and to its ad agency. The commercial never aired on television again,” said Rosenblum.

Okay, two points: 1) I’m not sure how well such an argument would have held up in court, and 2) isn’t there a certain irony to threatening to sue an ad merely influenced by a book about the totalitarian control of information? Just a smidge?

But those looking to rake Apple over the coals for infringing ads don’t need to cast back all the way back to the first Mac ad. Apple’s most recent spot, for the iPhone, has also been accused of knocking off an existing work. Visual artist Christian Marclay did a film in 1995 called Telephones which was a montage of characters from a variety of films answering the telephone.

Marclay claims that Apple approached him about using Telephones for the ad, but Marclay refused, so Apple went ahead and made their own spot. While the clips are different, some of the same actors appear in both videos, such as Clark Gable. Marclay has said that he has no plans to sue as of this time.

Follow the jump for a few more thoughts.

This isn’t the first time Apple’s been accused of ripping off other properties for their ads. In 2005, an Apple ad featuring an Eminem song was accused of being too similar to an ad for shoe company Lugz, and in 2006, musical group The Postal Service took issue with Apple’s ad for its new Intel-based lineup, which was suspiciously similar to the music video for the band’s song Such Great Heights (in fact, both the ad and music video were created by the same filmmakers).

So is Apple’s advertising merely the victim of its own success, or do these events add up to a systematic disregard for the intellectual property of others? It’s hard to say for sure: in the case of the 1984 ad, the book seems to have been more a matter of inspiration for the dystopian future shown in the spot, a theory reinforced by the hiring of director Ridley Scott, who had just finished filming Blade Runner. But the incidents with Marclay and The Postal Service seem to cast Apple in a less favorable light, suggesting that there’s at least some premeditation going on here. There’s a fine line between homage and outright theft, and Apple seems to be weaving back and forth over that line like a driver using an iPod.