Teller & The Shadow Thief

A little over a decade ago, Teller fought a legal battle against a Belgian magician, Gerard Dogge, who had uploaded a version of Teller's signature illusion, Shadows, onto YouTube and offered to sell the secret for $3,050. 

Understandably, Teller did not want someone selling a method for his illusion, which had been a staple part of Penn & Teller’s act for nearly four decades.

However, no matter how much the magic community frowns upon magicians who watch tricks, come up with methods, and flog their own versions, there’s very little that can be done to stop them, legally, that is. 

So, Teller took a slightly different approach, and what followed was an unprecedented Copyright Infringement case involving Private Investigators, fierce debate, and legal fees of up to $550,000.

Teller wanted to keep the secret of Shadows in the dark.

In performance, a spotlight illuminates a flower protruding from a vase and its shadow appears behind it on a blank canvas. With no music, dialogue or any sound, Teller approaches the canvas with a large knife, aiming the tip of the blade at the area close to the shadow of one of the flower's leafs. 

As the knife bores the shadow, the real leaf slips away.

The same happens again with another leaf, followed by the petals at the top of the flower, all while Teller never goes near the actual vase.

Then, Teller seems to mistakingly nick the tip of his thumb with the knife, so he holds his hand up to display its shadow, when a large, glooping silhouette of blood seems to drip from his thumb.

As a final motif, Teller brings his hand closer to the white canvas and sweeps across it, spreading a smear of glistening red blood, all whilst staring mournfully at the audience. The lights then fade away.

Teller knew just how good this piece of magic was. So much so, he actually ensured that the story of the effect was copyrighted in 1983 as a "dramatic pantomime."

In hindsight, I bet he was very glad that he did too! But what’s significant here is that he didn’t copyright the method, he couldn’t have. That would have required a patent to cover the details of the apparatus, and can be more expensive too. The other thing with patents is they require the methodology to be publicly listed.

So, in order to protect the secret. Teller had to copyright the expression of the trick, or the idea of it in the context of a pantomime or performance.

This is where Gerard Dogge comes in. Twenty years after Teller acquired the copyright for Shadows, a YouTube video is uploaded called The Rose & her Shadow Close up ! - Gerard Bakardy.

The video, which only had a handful of views before it was removed, depicts a flower in a vase, with its shadow behind it on a blank canvas, as a magician (Dogge) uses a knife to slice the shadows of the leaves and the petals away.

Sounds familiar, right?

In the video’s description, Dogge even acknowledges “Penn & Teller performing a similar trick” and tags the duo as well, presumably to attract their fans who might be keen on discovering the secret.

Regardless of whether or not his method was original or the same as Teller's (I can’t confirm that, I never bought it!), it’s clear he had ripped off Teller’s routine. 

At first, Teller wanted to settle the dispute without heading to court, so he offered the Belgian magician $15,000 to take the video down and stop selling the trick.

Dogge “allegedly refused the terms, counter offering a larger sum, which Teller rejected.”

So off to the courtroom they went.

Well, Teller wanted to go to court.

Dogge might have been more reluctant.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, “Teller had to hire a private investigator to locate Dogge to serve papers to him, and for a while, Dogge evaded service in Belgium, Spain and other European countries.” 

Eventually, Dogge had no choice but to fight back.

There were three areas that Teller was accusing Dogge of infringing upon regarding copyright of Shadows: firstly, Dogge’s deliberate imitation of the pantomime script; secondly, his attempt to sell the secret; and finally, unfair competition, misleading anyone who bought Dogge’s copy to think that it had Teller’s blessing.

In response, Dogge claimed that part of Teller’s original act included his partner Penn challenging the public to copy the piece by stating, “No one knows how ‘Shadows' is done and no one will ever figure it out.” 

Dogge also argued that both his video and Teller’s act were "not substantially similar because his secret to performing the illusion differs from Teller's, and because he uses a clear glass bottle instead of a vase in his version.”

Ultimately, in the eyes of the court, Dogge’s argument wasn’t strong enough. They weren’t at all interested in someone trying to work out the secret and merely passing the piece off as their own.

In other words, when watching a good magic trick, audiences aren’t aware of how the trick is done.

For all intense and purposes, if two performances have the same effect, the method may as well be the same too. 

In an online case summary, it states: 

The final verdict saw Dogge guilty of copyright infringement but denied Teller’s motions for unfair competition and damages. However, because Dogge refused to attend the trial in person, Teller asked the court for a default judgment against him, which the judge deemed appropriate. 

All in all, Dogge was ordered to pay $30,000 to Teller, which, on top of $500,000 in attorney fees, made the cost of copying the Shadows illusion pretty hefty.

10 years have now passed since the case of Teller vs Dogge, and although it seems both parties have moved on from this particular episode, Dogge still has a YouTube channel up and a website dedicated to what he considers to be an “embarrassing Las Vegas lawsuit.”

The website, titled Gerard Bakardy’s freedom of Speech, (‘Bakardy’ being his stage name) makes his stance pretty clear, that he thinks the whole situation was blown out of all proportion. Similarly, his YouTube channel has 8 videos on the illusion, all in different languages, one particular video parodying the situation.

Granted, these videos were made whilst the case was still active, and he hasn’t made any statements on the matter since.

He has uploaded a couple of videos in the last year, completely unrelated to the case, but the fact the videos and the website are still up for people to see suggest that, regardless of the fact that the outcome was in Teller’s favour, Dogge still wants his side of the story to be heard.

Needless to say, Teller’s victory goes to show the predicament magicians find ourselves in when it comes to creating original works of magic and protecting the secrets. If you’ve got an original presentation, you might want to consider copyrighting the performance, not the method.