Not to my understanding, but every phone in a movie is an opportunity to sell product placement, and if Apple's agreement says "good guys only" then you're either stuck with that, or you don't agree to it.
You could give a bad guy an iPhone for $1000, but you might rather have Motorola pay you to use their phone instead.
Trademarks do not prevent people from using or commenting on products. Trademarks exist to prevent confusion about which products are really produced by the brand owner, not to prevent honest depictions. It might come in to play if you show a trademark while doing something that the trademarked object cannot do.
If a character tastes sauce X, and sauce X's logo is displayed prominently, and the character shows disgust for sauce X, it could be misrepresentation of the product. Look at it the other way around, as anti-advertising: what would stop competitors buying negative coverage, negative placement if you will, against the trademark?
Not sure how that works. If the director wants the crook to have an Iphone, how can Apple prevent this? I assume they will not sponsor the movie, but it is not in their power to disallow it, certainly?
No, every piece of clothing actors wear is not easily distinguishable nor do people relate it to mischief.
But if you use a iPhone to hack the matrix and bring down the Italian government. Someone somewhere is going to assume iPhone is better at being "bad" than other phones. Regardless how true it is.
Apple is attempting to prevent their phone from being used to do bad stuff.
I think either they are paid by Apple for the product placement, thus they must do whatever Apple wants, or they don't want to piss Apple off even if legally they could do whatever they want. The production company could say goodbye to future Apple product placement income for portraying Apple products poorly.
Trademark owners may object to the use of their trademarks in fictional films or other media productions without their consent, and seek to enjoin such uses by filing a trademark infringement action under section 43(a) of the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)), unfair competition in violation of the common law of New York, under the Federal Trademark Dilution Act ("FTDA"), and dilution of trademark in violation of New York's anti-dilution statute (section 368-d of the New York General Business Law).
Somehow you picked entirely the wrong paragraph from that blog post to summarize it.
The cited paragraph would be true of a movie like Harold and Kumar go to White Castle because the brand name is part of the title of the movie and the brand plays a major part of the story.
But it wouldn't apply to an incidental use of a branded product in a production, i.e., a car chase scene whether the brand of the car or vehicle-specific features are irrelevant.
Well I know how this works for TV shows (Got Talents, Master Chef, and national series, and they work all the same):
A show/movie/series is in the process of being financed and you have sales teams going around to Media Agencies and/or direct to brands (usually media agencies are the first contact) and they pitch the show with the available placements for product placement.
Cars, clothes, drinks, food, shampoo, you name it - everything that's on screen it's sold.
If it's not sold it's unbranded, even if you recognize the product by it's shape, the logo can't show.
So basically what happened so far is that the sales team approaches Apple Media Agency or Apple directly and pitch them the movies/shows and the characters with enough relevance/screen on time, and ask if they want to place their product with that character.
Probably it's even a guideline nowadays that the agency account manager doesn't even let villains, crooks, etc placements even reach Apple brand management because they know the brand guidelines to not be associated with "Evil Characters".
After some time they don't even pitch those placements to them because they know it's a direct "No".
If it's a yes then there's a series of meetings to show the script/story board where the product is actually placed and shown, and some brands even have a say over the directors in some shots.
In some sets there are usually brand representatives with the respective media agency contact.
No idea if it's like this on Hollywood, but should be something in these lines.
I haven't seen the movie but was planning to - is this a spoiler? Does this mean when I watch the movie and see that a character has an iPhone, I know that they're not the real killer?
People were watching for it and noticed when someone in the organization suddenly switched to using a Dell, only to reveal their heel turn a couple of episodes later.
I recall that for an organization devoted to counter-terrorism, they seemed to have a policy of only hiring undercover terrorists.
Do you really want an answer to that question if you are trying to avoid spoilers for the movie? Right now, you don't know whether it is a spoiler or not. It is Scrodinger's spoiler. Why open the box and risk finding a dead cat?
It is a whodunit. Those movies are designed for you to obsess over every detail to figure out who actually committed the murder. Just consider the suspects' phones as extra clues that could prove to be either vital in solving the crime or a complete red herring.
Because as a reader of Hacker News, I am driven by knowledge and information, even if it is to my detriment. My personal condition is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is The Knowledge.
If that is the case and you are willing to brave another potential spoiler... this movie is setup in a way this iPhone spoiler is a much smaller reveal than it would be in most other whodunits. I can't say more without serious potential spoilers, but you would know what I mean if you see the movie. I wouldn't let this iPhone detail decrease your desire to see the movie.
I don't actually remember what kind of phone each character in this movie has, but this headline is not only an issue for this movie, I guess it can be a spoiler for any movie you watch from now on! Hah.
If that's the case then if I'm a thriller author and my bestseller is going into production then I will be lining up a whole artillery of attorneys and probably some court orders equivalent to Anton Pillar orders which is the England copyright abuse evidence seizure order and the nuclear option and also capable of being treated as international when the agreement is operated from England the location of parties subject to the Royal Courts is irrelevant unless you can't obtain LEO cooperation in which case your judge chews the England based entity a new one for starters. My objective being to secure definitive evidence whether the movie producers are debasing my moral copyright in a criminal defacement and distortion of my artwork.
This is a spoiler. That said, not really. It's not the type of movie where there's a big room at the end with a ton of suspects and you seeing some iPhones will ruin all the suspense. It's a lot of fun with a great plot.
Or maybe Apple doesn't have a problem with douchey racist rich folk using their brand, per se, so long as they don't try to pin their attempted patricide (avucide?) on a servant.
I suspect this behavior occurs due to product placement. Apple pays movies and television to prominently feature its products. Apple products do not appear on screen by accident. Apple pays for them to appear. Also, then, there is incentive for screen production to never display Apple products on screen without a contract knowing Apple will pay money to ensure their products do appear.
I suspect Apple includes this limitation in their contracts.
Is there evidence to suggest the product placement is paid? I had always heard that Apple does not do this, and that the products are simply in the media due to the director's choice. But that's what Apple would want me to think!
If you watch any of the AppleTV+ shows that are set in modern times, they all have iPhones, Macs, and lots of other Apple stuff.
Not sure if it's "paid" product placement or just part of the contract for being on AppleTV+, but it can't be a coincidence.
In Mythic Quest, there's a scene where you can see some iOS code on one of the screens. (Which wouldn't be that odd for a MMORPG game, except that it's code for controlling the camera.)
Razer laptops also make a surprising number of appearances in Mythic Quest, to their credit. I didn't catch if there was promotional consideration, but either way, it's a great show.
It's a brand thing. If you see an Audi in a film, it's because Volkswagen AG paid for it. All the Oracle stuff in Tony Stark's house was paid for by Oracle. Square Enix didn't put Beats headphones advertisements in the FFXV movie for nothing.
There are paid promotional situations. That doesn't mean that everything is a paid promotional appearance. Sometimes the product just makes sense in the situation.
e.g. BMW occasionally sponsors their vehicle to be in a premium film (e.g. Mission Impossible), often doing in-kind marketing agreements. Yet there are many films where BMW vehicles appear with no sponsorship whatsoever because it's logically a good candidate for the car in the situation/conveys the right image. Ford Crown Vics were every film cop car despite Ford's lack of involvement with that. And iPhones appear in a lot of situations where the most likely real-world phone would be an iPhone.
And to dispute a common misnomer, it is entirely within fair use to show brand logos presuming you aren't maligning the product in some way. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from showing a villain with an iPhone presuming you don't pretend the phone is a bomb or something, beyond Apple objecting to giving you free products.
So why do films/shows sometimes occlude the brand? Usually because someone else paid them to show their brand and they don't want brand confusion.
As an aside, elsewhere someone mentioned a show saying "promotional considerations provided by Apple". That specifically means free product, and excludes monetary sponsorship.
"Apple products do not appear on screen by accident. Apple pays for them to appear"
It has been reported by people in the business -- quite a few times -- that Apple does not pay for movie or television appearances. At least not directly. Instead they provide hardware for free to be utilized for placements, at least if they're good with the content of the show and format of the placement.
"Apple products do not appear on screen by accident."
If your movie or show is about American upper middle class teens, they're probably going to have iPhones. Apple doesn't need to pay for that to be true, though competitors need to pay for that to not be true.
I mean, tonnes of times you see Apple hardware and the show goes out of its way to occlude that fact (e.g. the MBP with the Apple logo covered). There just happens to be a lot of Apple stuff in the business, and it's what people are comfortable with.
Barter is still a form of payment and all of this screen placement occurs under contract and marketing direction from Apple. I still view that as paid product placement, which is different than if the production included Apple products without any contract or guidance from Apple.
"all of this screen placement occurs under contract and marketing direction from Apple"
Your link seems to go to efforts to state the opposite. Yes Apple has a liaison and yes they work with productions, but compared to the industry this is absolutely tepid.
So to contrast it, when you see HP or Sony or other such products, 100% of the time those companies paid a six figure+ sum and provided hardware for free. When you see Apple, the going case seems to be that you can negotiate free hardware if you want, but that's it.
i mean their hardware isn't cheap, that's not insignificant. enough to leverage conditions like that, and prob enough to be worth it for many producers to comply.
If you see a prominent Samsung device in a show, there almost certainly was both free devices and sponsorship involved. If you see an Apple device, the going information is that it's just free devices.
They aren't picking Apple to save a few thousand dollars on props. In most cases they're trying to grab a little bit of that halo themselves.
There was a time in racing/car based video games where a lot of licensed vehicles could only suffer superficial damage in the game, due to onerous policies like this.
Its look hilarious when you crashed into a wall at 120mph and drove off with just a scratch on the paint and a bit of windshield damage
with GTA i imagine there's also the consideration that these brands don't want their cars to be seen used in drive-by's and robberies. if they're sensitive enough to not want to see cars damaged they'd prob have a problem with images of their cars running down prostitutes on the street lol
Many movies do this too. Transporter 2 is a great example. In The Transporter all of the cars sustain significant damage. There were no vehicle brand deals. Audi provided the vehicles for Transporter 2. They didn't even get scratched.
I noticed interesting and opposite pattern in various TV shows: when somebody drives a Tesla then he is at least morally shady if not outright bad guy. And it looks like that is intentional.
I've noticed this true, but the same could typically be said for Mercedes Benz and BMW. I think it's less Tesla specifically and more "murdered out luxury car".
Often the show goes out of its way to somehow emphasize that it is a Tesla (shot of door handles popping out, namedropping in dialog...), I haven't noticed that so much for other luxury brands.
There’s a political drive to force Apple to provide encryption back doors on every phone, an argument = you can’t have privacy anymore because bad guys now exist. So I think this is a good move by Apple. I don’t want an uninformed and propagandized public from electing someone who takes away privacy because some producers want to collect that data-gathering lobby money for their movie.
EDIT: Here’s some research on how lobbying works in Hollywood:
Can products even be protected in this manner? This seems way outside the scope of copyright protections and seems entirely wrong, but IANAL. Can anyone add some background to this that is?
edit: barrkel posts a comment that links and explains the Trademark law around this. search for it and upvote!
Logos and names are trademarked, not copyrighted. Theoretically, Apple could sue if they could argue that their trademark is being used in a way that could deceive consumers. That's the test for trademark infringement: would a reasonable person think that you are passing off a trademark as your own product?
But you don't need permission to say or use trademarks in a movie. Josie and the Pussycats is a famous example: they used a ton of trademarks to make it look like product placement, where in reality they weren't paid for all of the trademarks they used (nor did any of the named brands complain):
It references some of the existing caselaw. My reading suggests Apple would be very unlikely to succeed in court if they legally challenged a filmmaker for simply giving an iPhone to a villainous character.
If Apple acts overly douchey in this fashion, movies can institute anti-commercials in their scripts.
>Boss: It looks serious. Those guys are using Macs.
>Technerd: No worries. Macs are second rate systems. A bit slow. A bit inflexible. We'll not have any problems getting control of their systems and out maneuvering the kiddiez.
Honestly, I took up smoking Cigars because I saw all villains smoke Cigars. Call me stupid but then a lot of people do get influenced by the bad guys and buy the products for the reason it is being used by bad guys.
It's one of those things... if you follow Aston Martin at all (as a company) - they'd have died a long time ago if it weren't for James Bond propping them up.
I agree, but aside from a couple edge cases (again avoiding spoilers) I'm not sure I'd categorize any of them as particularly villainous. That show does a good job of showing broken humans as the complex messes they really are. And yes, Apple gear is everywhere in seemingly every frame of it.
Yes, but the other Apple Originals I've watched don't have much if any product placement. Granted it would be anachronistic in something like "For All Mankind", but I don't recall seeing any in "See" or whatever other shows of theirs I've watched either.
The product placement is quite deliberate and to be expected, even though Apple probably thought it was clever and subliminal e.g. if you are an iPhone owner, and use the default note/tri-tone/chord ringtones, you will be reaching for your phone at least once during The Morning Show.
On a slight tangent, in my opinion, the best recent representation of phones and villians, was is in the now cancelled show: Ray Donovan; you can spot everything from old school fliphones, Blackberry's, Lumia, iPhones et al. in it's seven series trajectory. Furthermore, somebody on that show is also a watch-nut and likes cars!
I think a lot of product placement comes down to more extortion than permission. The production wants Apple to pony up some money or free stuff in exchange for having their product promoted -- "promotional consideration". In the case where you are shaking down Apple for money, they probably demand certain assurances in return.
You could just use Apple devices and pay for them, and then Apple would have no say.
My theory, too, is easily falsifiable -- check whether the movies you linked have "promotional consideration provided by" lists that include Apple.
When I worked in television, the news anchors had Dell laptops on the anchor desk because Dell gave them to the station for free for that purpose. It was a way for the station to save money, and Dell was happy for the exposure.
99% of the people in the station, including the talent, had no idea. They assumed it was an IT department decision. I'm not sure where the idea came from, but it was told to me by the #2 person in the station.
This did come out right around when Knives Out 2 was formally announced. Maybe Rian Johnson is playing a meta-long con.
There was a lot of attentiveness to phones as class signifiers throughout the movie though. The maid's phone has a broken screen, for instance, and she uses an Android. Meanwhile all the rich people have the newest model iPhones in immaculate condition without cases.
By that I mean it will act as a spoiler - see a charter without an iPhone and you can presume that they are a bad guy/gal and with that spoil a plot twist later on. Equally, if they do have one, you know that they are a good guy/gal till the end!
I've worked at studios and at agencies and this is anecdotal but what I've picked up on over the years during drinks/drunks with account and creatives.
There's a whole product placement sales team that monetises brands who like to see their products being handled by the good guy. Hero saves the world with 0.3 seconds left on his shining Galaxy S20, maker logo in prominence.
Piss that brand off? You might not see revenue from them for a couple of seasons. Or ever. Oh dear.
There is also logo and other IP/copyright enforcement. Why is made-up-spy-agency's logo over the Apple logo on what's obviously a three generation old MacBook? Because somebody didn't have the budget to factor it in.
In a lot of cities you can't even include buildings in b roll without legal clearance.
It's fascinating when you dig in, the amount of payola for this kind of thing is really interesting (and thinking how to monetise it…).
> The 'Cloud Gate' in Chicago has a bunch of bullshit around it re licensing and photography permission.
I'm all too willing to believe this, but Wikipedia doesn't know of anyone getting in trouble but the NRA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate#In_popular_culture . (Not that it's OK if only one group is subject to onerous restrictions, or that other groups couldn't be targeted, or if others have just been pre-emptively stopped from even trying.) Do you have a reference?
That is true for IP rights of many pieces of fine artwork. If you look for Cloudgate in particular on getty images or similar you will only see editorial rights for sale because the artist kept licensing rights to their creation, even though it is in a public place.
I think we're safe, because most movies seem to follow the alternative of "somebody makes a static imitation of a known product's UI in After Effects".
Beware, the post is a spoiler for the movie it's talking about! Normally in a spoiler you know what movie is going to be spoiled, but in this case if you've read the headline you know how it will be spoiled, but not which movie it is. I advise people who care about any movie spoilers to not click the link.
144 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 32.0 ms ] threadYou could give a bad guy an iPhone for $1000, but you might rather have Motorola pay you to use their phone instead.
If a character tastes sauce X, and sauce X's logo is displayed prominently, and the character shows disgust for sauce X, it could be misrepresentation of the product. Look at it the other way around, as anti-advertising: what would stop competitors buying negative coverage, negative placement if you will, against the trademark?
I assume companies can say, no random director you cannot use a Microsoft Surface to nuke the world.
There must be something about it showcasing a product in a negative light.
But if you use a iPhone to hack the matrix and bring down the Italian government. Someone somewhere is going to assume iPhone is better at being "bad" than other phones. Regardless how true it is.
Apple is attempting to prevent their phone from being used to do bad stuff.
Trademark owners may object to the use of their trademarks in fictional films or other media productions without their consent, and seek to enjoin such uses by filing a trademark infringement action under section 43(a) of the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)), unfair competition in violation of the common law of New York, under the Federal Trademark Dilution Act ("FTDA"), and dilution of trademark in violation of New York's anti-dilution statute (section 368-d of the New York General Business Law).
The cited paragraph would be true of a movie like Harold and Kumar go to White Castle because the brand name is part of the title of the movie and the brand plays a major part of the story.
But it wouldn't apply to an incidental use of a branded product in a production, i.e., a car chase scene whether the brand of the car or vehicle-specific features are irrelevant.
A show/movie/series is in the process of being financed and you have sales teams going around to Media Agencies and/or direct to brands (usually media agencies are the first contact) and they pitch the show with the available placements for product placement.
Cars, clothes, drinks, food, shampoo, you name it - everything that's on screen it's sold.
If it's not sold it's unbranded, even if you recognize the product by it's shape, the logo can't show.
So basically what happened so far is that the sales team approaches Apple Media Agency or Apple directly and pitch them the movies/shows and the characters with enough relevance/screen on time, and ask if they want to place their product with that character.
Probably it's even a guideline nowadays that the agency account manager doesn't even let villains, crooks, etc placements even reach Apple brand management because they know the brand guidelines to not be associated with "Evil Characters".
After some time they don't even pitch those placements to them because they know it's a direct "No".
If it's a yes then there's a series of meetings to show the script/story board where the product is actually placed and shown, and some brands even have a say over the directors in some shots.
In some sets there are usually brand representatives with the respective media agency contact.
No idea if it's like this on Hollywood, but should be something in these lines.
I recall that for an organization devoted to counter-terrorism, they seemed to have a policy of only hiring undercover terrorists.
So, realistic?
I suspect Apple includes this limitation in their contracts.
If anyone is curious about some of the details https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNuGdv536mM (starts around 2min in)
Not sure if it's "paid" product placement or just part of the contract for being on AppleTV+, but it can't be a coincidence.
In Mythic Quest, there's a scene where you can see some iOS code on one of the screens. (Which wouldn't be that odd for a MMORPG game, except that it's code for controlling the camera.)
e.g. BMW occasionally sponsors their vehicle to be in a premium film (e.g. Mission Impossible), often doing in-kind marketing agreements. Yet there are many films where BMW vehicles appear with no sponsorship whatsoever because it's logically a good candidate for the car in the situation/conveys the right image. Ford Crown Vics were every film cop car despite Ford's lack of involvement with that. And iPhones appear in a lot of situations where the most likely real-world phone would be an iPhone.
And to dispute a common misnomer, it is entirely within fair use to show brand logos presuming you aren't maligning the product in some way. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from showing a villain with an iPhone presuming you don't pretend the phone is a bomb or something, beyond Apple objecting to giving you free products.
So why do films/shows sometimes occlude the brand? Usually because someone else paid them to show their brand and they don't want brand confusion.
As an aside, elsewhere someone mentioned a show saying "promotional considerations provided by Apple". That specifically means free product, and excludes monetary sponsorship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXFsXnklOhY (28 second mark)
It might not be paid in all cases, but I've seen it in a few shows.
It has been reported by people in the business -- quite a few times -- that Apple does not pay for movie or television appearances. At least not directly. Instead they provide hardware for free to be utilized for placements, at least if they're good with the content of the show and format of the placement.
"Apple products do not appear on screen by accident."
If your movie or show is about American upper middle class teens, they're probably going to have iPhones. Apple doesn't need to pay for that to be true, though competitors need to pay for that to not be true.
I mean, tonnes of times you see Apple hardware and the show goes out of its way to occlude that fact (e.g. the MBP with the Apple logo covered). There just happens to be a lot of Apple stuff in the business, and it's what people are comfortable with.
Barter is still a form of payment and all of this screen placement occurs under contract and marketing direction from Apple. I still view that as paid product placement, which is different than if the production included Apple products without any contract or guidance from Apple.
"all of this screen placement occurs under contract and marketing direction from Apple"
Your link seems to go to efforts to state the opposite. Yes Apple has a liaison and yes they work with productions, but compared to the industry this is absolutely tepid.
So to contrast it, when you see HP or Sony or other such products, 100% of the time those companies paid a six figure+ sum and provided hardware for free. When you see Apple, the going case seems to be that you can negotiate free hardware if you want, but that's it.
They aren't picking Apple to save a few thousand dollars on props. In most cases they're trying to grab a little bit of that halo themselves.
Its look hilarious when you crashed into a wall at 120mph and drove off with just a scratch on the paint and a bit of windshield damage
EDIT: Here’s some research on how lobbying works in Hollywood:
https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/17/5/313
Here are screens from two recent movies where villainous characters use iPhones:
https://productplacementblog.com/movies/apple-iphone-smartph...
https://productplacementblog.com/movies/apple-iphone-4s-smar...
edit: barrkel posts a comment that links and explains the Trademark law around this. search for it and upvote!
But you don't need permission to say or use trademarks in a movie. Josie and the Pussycats is a famous example: they used a ton of trademarks to make it look like product placement, where in reality they weren't paid for all of the trademarks they used (nor did any of the named brands complain):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josie_and_the_Pussycats_(film)...
https://rodriqueslaw.com/blog/how-use-brands-and-products-fi...
It references some of the existing caselaw. My reading suggests Apple would be very unlikely to succeed in court if they legally challenged a filmmaker for simply giving an iPhone to a villainous character.
>Boss: It looks serious. Those guys are using Macs.
>Technerd: No worries. Macs are second rate systems. A bit slow. A bit inflexible. We'll not have any problems getting control of their systems and out maneuvering the kiddiez.
Bond rapes Pussy Galore and he's such a man that she falls for him and joins his side.
Actual rape.
On a slight tangent, in my opinion, the best recent representation of phones and villians, was is in the now cancelled show: Ray Donovan; you can spot everything from old school fliphones, Blackberry's, Lumia, iPhones et al. in it's seven series trajectory. Furthermore, somebody on that show is also a watch-nut and likes cars!
You could just use Apple devices and pay for them, and then Apple would have no say.
My theory, too, is easily falsifiable -- check whether the movies you linked have "promotional consideration provided by" lists that include Apple.
The idea is that most producers want to get paid for using the products in the movie, or want to at least get free products.
99% of the people in the station, including the talent, had no idea. They assumed it was an IT department decision. I'm not sure where the idea came from, but it was told to me by the #2 person in the station.
There was a lot of attentiveness to phones as class signifiers throughout the movie though. The maid's phone has a broken screen, for instance, and she uses an Android. Meanwhile all the rich people have the newest model iPhones in immaculate condition without cases.
By that I mean it will act as a spoiler - see a charter without an iPhone and you can presume that they are a bad guy/gal and with that spoil a plot twist later on. Equally, if they do have one, you know that they are a good guy/gal till the end!
There's a whole product placement sales team that monetises brands who like to see their products being handled by the good guy. Hero saves the world with 0.3 seconds left on his shining Galaxy S20, maker logo in prominence.
Piss that brand off? You might not see revenue from them for a couple of seasons. Or ever. Oh dear.
There is also logo and other IP/copyright enforcement. Why is made-up-spy-agency's logo over the Apple logo on what's obviously a three generation old MacBook? Because somebody didn't have the budget to factor it in.
In a lot of cities you can't even include buildings in b roll without legal clearance.
It's fascinating when you dig in, the amount of payola for this kind of thing is really interesting (and thinking how to monetise it…).
I'm all too willing to believe this, but Wikipedia doesn't know of anyone getting in trouble but the NRA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate#In_popular_culture . (Not that it's OK if only one group is subject to onerous restrictions, or that other groups couldn't be targeted, or if others have just been pre-emptively stopped from even trying.) Do you have a reference?
https://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag05/may_05/webspecs/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomium#Worldwide_copyright_cl...
The bad guy's computer can't be a Mac (Apple objects) or Windows (Microsoft objects) so it is Linux.
To type up the evil manifesto, they can't use Google Docs (Google objects) or Microsoft Office (Microsoft objects) so they use Open Office.
To find directions to their target, they can't use Google Maps (Google objects) or Apple Maps (Apple objects) so they use Open Street Maps.
To chat with their evil buddies, they can't use Messages (Apple objects) or WhatsApp(Facebook objects) so they use Matrix.
Basically, in the movies of the future, the bad people will all be using open software/hardware.
Anyways, Open Office still exists, it is now owned by Apache. But yes, Libre Office mostly took over.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22427546
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22430397
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22431243
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22426385
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22425435
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22425435
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22424848