> Is the similarity with an existing book enough to justify a law suit?
> This would prohibit a lot of pictures. Showing a strong barbarian hero
> in my rendering, would this allow the owner of the Conan copyrights to
> sue me?
Conan, that would be a strong thing, Koontz wrote those books once, and
the script If I remember correctly..

//Spider

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Marc Schimmler wrote:
> 
> Jerry Anning wrote:
> >
> > Sorry Ken, Nathan.  That *is* considered a copyright infringement.  If you
> > create an image of, say, Callandor in the Stone of Tear (nudge, nudge), even
> > though you create the image yourself as you imagine it, you are infringing the
> > author's copyright.  Incidentally, most of what I have been saying is not just
> > US based, but a matter of nearly universal international law (the Treaty of
> > Berne).

> 
> If Nathan wouldn't give this image a name connected with the book and if
> he wouldn't mention it in the txt-file would there be room for a law
> suit?
> Is the similarity with an existing book enough to justify a law suit?
> This would prohibit a lot of pictures. Showing a strong barbarian hero
> in my rendering, would this allow the owner of the Conan copyrights to
> sue me?
> If I remember my patent and copyright course there is some room left for
> creativity.
> It's a term hard to grab but I think it is connected with the
> originality of the idea.

Don't call your barbarian Conan and don't make him look too much like Conan book
cover art, Arnold in the movies, Conan calendars etc. and don't tell a story
that is an obvious pastiche of an actual Conan story (i.e. "Spire of the
Mammoth" (looking like the Conan story "Tower of the Elephant"), and it is OK. 
As you say, this can be a gray area.  Note that the Disney people made Marvel
make physical changes in "Howard the Duck" so that he wouldn't look too much
like "Donald Duck" even though the stories were completely different and aimed
mainly at different audiences.  For irtc purposes it is my ***OPINION*** that if
you don't use actual character names, look too much like existing art or quote
or too closely copy an existing and identifiable story, you will be ok.  Of
course, most scenes, from a visual standpoint, are generic enough to be no
problem.  A woman on a balcony isn't necessarily Juliet and the man below
doesn't have to be Romeo (incidentally, they themselves were "borrowed" from
older material!).

Jerry Anning
cle### [at] dholcom

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On Tue, 02 Feb 1999 19:39:08 -0500, Jerry Anning <cle### [at] dholcom>
wrote:

> A woman on a balcony isn't necessarily Juliet and the man below
>doesn't have to be Romeo (incidentally, they themselves were "borrowed" from
>older material!).

And, IIRC, the balcony doesn't appear in the actual stage directions.

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Marc Schimmler wrote:
> 
> If Nathan wouldn't give this image a name connected with the book and if
> he wouldn't mention it in the txt-file would there be room for a law
> suit?

But, of course, that would remove a lot of meaning from the scene.  I'm
glad I didn't start the image yet (too much programming of photon maps).
Instead, I'll probably just make up my own imaginary world.  ;-)

-Nathan

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Ken wrote in message <36AF8BE6.525718FA@pacbell.net>...
/.../
>If we take the case of the Disney co. then you would know you had
>better run and hide if they find you using any of their coprighted
>or trade mark creatures. They persue and procecute every case
>regardless of their seeming innocence. I read in the newspaper
>once of a daycare center that had a few Disney characters painted
>onone wall of the kids playground. Disney made them remove the
>"offending" images.



the central character of his image. Is he in the Big House by now?

Margus

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Margus Ramst wrote:
> 
> Ken wrote in message <36AF8BE6.525718FA@pacbell.net>...
> /.../
> >If we take the case of the Disney co. then you would know you had
> >better run and hide if they find you using any of their coprighted
> >or trade mark creatures. They persue and procecute every case
> >regardless of their seeming innocence. I read in the newspaper
> >once of a daycare center that had a few Disney characters painted
> >onone wall of the kids playground. Disney made them remove the
> >"offending" images.
> 

> the central character of his image. Is he in the Big House by now?
> 
> Margus

If any of Micky's goon sqaud have seen it you can bet there are
a team of detectives and lawyers working on it. Those guy's don't
mess around.

-- 
Ken Tyler

tyl### [at] pacbellnet

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Ron Parker wrote :
> I guess I knew all this.  The question is, does this use
> constitute "fair use?"  Personally, I doubt it, but I'm
> looking for other opinions.  I'd hate to have to put a can
> of "POV Soup" in my image if I could have a can of
> Campbell's.  No disrespect to POV intended, of course. :)

Why not ?  A can of Pov-Soup could be much more interesting
that an ordinary Campbell's...  I did that in my winning "elements"
image (pxl506.jpg) with a tea label : "Pov-Tea(m) - pigment {Yellow}"
instead of "Lipton Yellow".  I could have used the original Lipton
thing, but paying little tributes to Pov seems to get the sympathy
of voters ;)

Cheers,
Fabien.

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Jerry Anning <cle### [at] dholcom> wrote in article
<36B1FC32.3D2788A0@dhol.com>...
> Spider wrote:
> > 
> > A question here.
> > Cincerning a song-lyric, where to go to get contact concearning the use
of the text ??
> > 
> > I had the whole theme built around this, including the text exisitng in
plain view, all
> > this for an IRTC entry(imaginary worlds).
> > Now, my problem is, I can't get a contact with the people owning the
copyright.
> > 
> > Since the text is not included with the record(Mine is a bootleg.) and
there is no contact
> > information for either band or producer. Anyone has an idea of how to
act ??
> 
> If you want to play it safe, drop this idea entirely.  The author Spider
(!)
> Robinson once wanted to quote a few lines from a song in one of his
novels and
> the relevant legal types wanted reimbursement measured in *thousands* of
US
> dollars!  Fortunately for Robinson, the musician himself was angry with
his
> agent/publishers/whatever (I forget the details) and granted Robinson
permission
> essentially to spite them.  I wouldn't count on that kind of luck.
> 

	'specially if the copyright is owned by the record company and not the
artist - I seem to recall, a case of an artist (Bjork, IIRC) using a sample
on track, that track was released on an album then the record company that
owned the copyright on the sampled material had a fit and got the album
withdrawn, the original artist (Scanner in this case, I think) that created
the piece that was sampled said it was OK, but the record company said "no,
we own the copyright", I think there was probably a little more to it than
this - there may have been some doubt over who owned the copyright or
something, but in the end the offending track was remixed sans sample and
the original artist (of the sampled material) had a big falling out with
their record company.

-- 
Scott Hill : Sco### [at] DDLinkscouk
Software Engineer (and all round nice guy)
Author of Pandora's Box : Watch this space.
Work homepage : http://www.ddlinks.demon.co.uk

"We will decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is." -
The Fox TV network.

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Ron Parker wrote:
<A bunch of stuff>

This goes right back to Andy Warhol and his soup can paintings. In
short: The company sued, Andy won.

I Believe that there is a blurb in the fair use bits of copyright laws
that says something to the effect that you can use copyrighted material
for purposes of parody, review or just plain art... Unless you are
saying bad things about it, in which case it's slander and that's
another set of laws.

And then there is trade mark law...

-- 
Chris Maryan
mailto:cma### [at] geocitiescom
***
Will work for cash.
***
Email me if you are interested in donating
to the Chris Maryan needs money fund.
We will also accept donations to the Chris
needs a Pentium II or SGI workstation 
fund and the Chris needs a car fund.

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An interesting thread.

A couple of things occur to me. Someone, earlier in the thread, mentioned a
coke can in space. This specific example strikes me as fair and legit.
parody/satire/whatever. A can of POV-cola just wouldn't have the same impact
or say the same things about polution and waste, etc.

An implication of this is that it's alright to use a copyrighted product as
long as you are 'dissing it. Curios. A thirsty man gratefully drinking a can
of Coke while admiring, bikini-clad woman watch adoringly would be a
copyright infringment, but a man using a can of Coke to replenish a
car-battery would be okay. Weird.

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