Copyright Laws...

[Pheebs]

Hummmmmmdiggity.

Well still waiting for a phone call back from the IP gov peoples... they sure do take forever!

I will let you all know what they say when I find out

[semi-pro waster]

Ok, I've got back and looked out the book, I'd rather forgotten how weighty the sodding thing is - "thick enough to choke a donkey" as an old lecturer of mine used to say, he never did mention why he was into donkey choking though. As a general rule you may be permitted acts that would otherwise be considered infringing (i.e. technically utilising someone elses IP) provided they do not unduly interfere with the owners commercial exploitation of the work - which you should be ok on, I rather doubt you are going for the same markets. However you may fall foul if they consider it to be derogatory treatment of their copyright, you can probably argue 'affectionate' parody or something similar (that's not a legal term in case you wondered) but it could involve lawyers.

You can create an artistic work from a literary one and not infringe copyright apparantly Bridget Foley Ltd v Elliott [1982] RPC 433 but I don't know if that could be transposed from dramatic work to artistic. Although precedents are not entirely favourable in that copying from a 3D object to 2D can infringe copyright and vice versa. Basic tests here, is there copying and secondly if there is copying does it form a substantial part of the work?

There is the issue of non-literal copying and levels of abstraction from the original but I wouldn't get too in-depth on that one.

Your best defence is probably that you are creating an adaptation and parody of the work(s), however if you can then I'd simply request permission from the copyright holders. It should avoid any potential legal wrangles and is much safer than relying on the opinions of anyone else in the area, no matter how educated (and I've not done any real studying for a couple of years now so I'm a bad person to supply advice). I hope fini or someone who knows more gets back to you, my information is largely taken from the Intellectual Property 6th Edition by David Bainbridge so my apologies to him if I've misinterpreted what he said. If you need me to look up specifics then I can do so but condensing the topic of IP law into a relatively small post is not going to happen.

[Pheebs]

Wowee! How interesting!

Thank you soo much for putting your time and effort into that It's muchly appreciated!

I will do some more research but based on what you have said it could well be worth my time and bother to do what I am planning.

As for obtaining permission from the copyright holders - I think I would seriously struggle as I would need the permission of literally hundreds of copyright holders all for one piece of artwork (indeed a large piece of artwork but still one).

I'm not quite sure how I would go about a) finding who owns copyright to say... Jurassic Park and then b) how to write to request and c) how long it will take to get a response - if I get one!

It's frustrating in a way because I have a niggly feeling that if I were to contact all these film copyright owner people I would either get turned down (despite the work being of minimum focus on them) or be asked for royalties (and one piece of art work really isn't going to make enough money to dish out royalties to everyone).

*hmmm hmm hmmM*

Food for thought.

Will keep on researching and see if there's a way - not around it - but to ensure I don't upset people without having to contact them all individually. Maybe I can put a public protest up to using their... well... their ideas/scenes/quotes translated to my own work and if they're not happy they can contact me. I'm sure there's something like that (I know to get TM for property when you submit your TM people have I think a year to protest and if no successful protest occurs it's then your own... maybe there's something similar?)

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Aww I hope I can do this because it will be the mutts nuts.

Thank you soo soo much again SPW

And the rest of you lot Thank you too!

[divine]

Originally Posted by Pheebs

As for obtaining permission from the copyright holders - I think I would seriously struggle as I would need the permission of literally hundreds of copyright holders all for one piece of artwork (indeed a large piece of artwork but still one).

Well if it's mostly films, I suspect the publishers are the ones who hold the copyright, so if you compiled a list of the films you wanted to use and their respective publishers, you could probably send out relatively few letters asking about lots of films at once.

[Pheebs]

Originally Posted by divine

Well if it's mostly films, I suspect the publishers are the ones who hold the copyright, so if you compiled a list of the films you wanted to use and their respective publishers, you could probably send out relatively few letters asking about lots of films at once.

*to toys r us theme choon*

There's a magical person
Who's so very cleever
With ideas in their millions
All under their hair!
He's a - Gee Knee Us!

Good point mister!! Taken on board!

[Mark]

Pheebs, I just accidentally stumbled upon this, which appears to be relevant:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7400268.stm

[Pheebs]

Copyright people called me and said to get permission of peoples to be safe.

BUmtastic.

This will take forever and I'm sure loads will say no which will ruin it all! Hopefully they won't be big heads and think that because of their little tiny contribution - of my own interpretation - to something so huuuge is going to be the reason people buy it and copying their own work... well they're egotistical twits!

I will work on this project once I manage to get everything else in line