I was wondering if Origami Models can be copyrighted.
The real problem is as follows.
A piece of paper is a piece of paper, right? Modifications to that piece of paper can’t be copyrighted can they? Isn’t Origami inherently public domain? Isn’t there to much prior art?
BUT,
If 3M can trademark a color (Their Blue painters tape) And Weight Watchers can trademark the word “Points”, what can’t be copy protected?
I highly doubt an origami pattern can have copyright protection. If you publish a description of how to fold the pattern, with diagrams, your expression of that can be copyrighted, but lists of simple instructions cannot, in and of themselves, be copyrighted. Recipes and game instructions, for instance. Your particular description of a recipe could (possibly) be eligible for copyright protection, but a list of ingredients and a basic description of how to put them all together isn’t.
Well, Dave Lister is kind of a smeghead, isn’t he? 
Perhaps a MODEL of Kryten would be in order here.
I don’t see why. A sculpture or a painting is merely the modification of one or a few substances. If sufficiently original and creative, then they are copyrightable. I see no reason why something that is sufficiently creative and original made by folding paper would be inherently non-protectable. Now whether any particular origami design is sufficiently creative and original is the operative question.
Nearly any word or image (something with distinctiveness) can serve as a trademark. There’s no reason a two- or three-dimensional origami image is necessarily not distinctive (depending on the goods or service for which the design is used).
“Prior art” is relevant only to patents, not to copyright or trademark law. In copyrights, you’re looking for “originality.” In trademarks you’re looking for “likelihood of confusion” with respect to someone else’s mark.
The word “points” is trademarkable only to the extent that is distinctive and not being used for its generic meaning.
It’s actually quite difficult to get trademark or product design trade dress protection on a colour. I don’t know the whole story behind the blue tape, but my first instinct is that it’s not trademarkable. Cases about colour I have read generally state that because there are only a limited number of distinguishable colours, it would not make sense for every competitor to have to come up with a different colour for its product.
For that matter, a novel is just a modification of a bunch of pieces of paper, too.
As for prior art, there’s certainly plenty of that for, say, the standard bird-base paper crane. But I can (and have) come up with completely new origami designs, which nobody has ever made before. I haven’t actually done anything to protect them as intellectual property, but I can’t see why (in principle) I couldn’t.
In Peter Engel’s book Folding The Universe, he describes a dispute that arose between Japanese origami master Akira Yoshizawa and Argentinian origami master Adolfo Cerceda. Apparently, both produced nearly-identical designs for a pig, and Yoshizawa accused Cerceda of pilfering his idea. Cerceda argued that it’s not uncommon for similar folds to be created independently. Other folders have noted this phenomenon as well.
It seems it might be difficult to enforce copyright protection under these circumstances.
To get a patent, your invention must be novel, non-obvious, and useful. I can see how an origami design might be novel or non-obvious, but I can’t see it being useful. If its only use is for its aesthetic value, then it is a creative work, and patent law doesn’t protect it.
To get copyright protection, your work must be original, creative, and fixed in a tangible medium. This seems most likely, because it seems to me that origami is basically a sculptural work.
To get trademark protection, you’d have to be using the design in commerce as an indicator of the origin of goods or services.
Yes, copyright law does allow for independent creation. You have to prove the “copying” part. That’s a major difference between “novelty” in patent law (“it’s never been done before”) and “originality” in copyright law (“I came up with it myself”). Usually, it’s difficult to get direct proof of copying, but U.S. law allows you to substitute proof of access and substantial similarity.