Re: art licensing question

Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> IANAL and therefore I probably shouldn't have replied.

:-)

> On Friday 22 August 2008, Matthew Woehlke wrote:
>> Hopefully there are some US copyright lawyers around here ;-). I want
>> to create an SVG that looks like a giraffe's patterning. Now, lets
>> say my art skills suck, and the only possible way I can do this is to
>> trace (NOT automated; by hand) a small section of a (presumably
>> copyrighted under a restrictive license) photo of a giraffe. Given
>> that what I'm tracing has the originality of tossing a giraffe pelt
>> (which itself cannot be copyrighted) on a scanner (and therefore, may
>> not qualify for copyright), is this OK?
> 
> In general, I'd say no. You are creating a derivative work. Depending on 
> the license you might be allowed to create a derivative work.
> 
>> At what point is a photo of a 
>> non-copyrightable object sufficiently original to be copyrighted?
> 
> Any photography is copyrighted.
> 
> From 
> http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/protect/p16_photography_copyright:
> <quote>
> Who owns the copyright on photographs?
> Under law, it is the photographer who will own copyright on any photos 
> he/she has taken, with the following exceptions:
> - If the photographer is an employee of the company the photos are taken 
> for, or is an employee of a company instructed to take the photos, the 
> photographer will be acting on behalf of his/her employer, and the 
> company the photographer works for will own the copyright.
> - If there is an agreement that assigns copyright to another party.
> </quote>
> 
> This seems to refer to UK law, but I think more or less the same is true 
> in almost any county.

It's not the law in the US. US law clearly states that a photograph must 
posess an amount of originality.

http://www.photolaw.net/faq.html
"For example, if a photographer were to make an exact copy of the Mona 
Lisa, the resulting image would not be protected by copyright because an 
exact copy does not constitute an original work."

For that matter, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright, 
the UK also requires that "there has to be some 'skill, labour and 
judgment' that has gone into it."

So the granite question is certainly legitimate. The giraffe is probably 
more tenuous :-).

>> (The above is actually a real example, though one of more immediate
>> concern involves a slab of granite. Again, AFAIK a slab of granite is
>> not copyrightable;
> 
> I assume this a slab of natural granite and not a slab of some fake 
> artificial granite.

As far as I know, blue pearl is natural.

-- 
Matthew
Person A: It's an ISO standard.
Person B: ...And that means what?
   --mal (http://theangryadmin.blogspot.com/2008/04/future.html)