On Sun, 01 Jun 2003 16:28:17 -0400, Bill Hails wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm currently working on an image which illustarates a scene in a famous
> (Sci-Fi) novel. I'm doing it for my own personal amusement only. It's
> very obvious from the image what the novel is (I hope :-). I kind of
> think of it as a book cover. I will probably post it to
> p.binaries.images at some point.
> 
> Is it likely I'm infringing any copyrights in so doing?
> 
> There was a film made of the book but my picture bears no resemblance.

	Ideas and concepts cannot be copyrighted. The idea behind a novel cannot
be copyrighted only the embodiment of the concept in the form of the
novel.

	Copyright only covers something which has been reduced to a fixed form
and it only covers that form.

	The novel is one fixed form and the author owns the copyright to it.

	An image is another form and you own the copyright to it regardless of
where you got the idea.

	There are limits of course. Changing one paragraph in a novel does not
create a new copyright but is infringement.

	As you say, your picture bears no resemblence to the movie so there is
no question of infringement.

	I am watching Stargate right now. The producers only own copyright to
the episodes produced and of course physically the stage prop. If you
create a model of it that is yours as are the images you create with it. If
you crop out an image of it from a vidcapture and use it, that is an
infringement. If you sneak onto the set and take a picture of it and use
it, that is an infringement as they own the object itself as you own your
model of it.

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