The master speaks, sort of.
And here is a discussion of substantial similarity and other copyright issues.
Your links go to the same page.
That’s not what Chronos wrote. He said that the statuette might have a separate copyright, if it was not created as a work for hire.
As to the principle, here is the U.S. Copyright Office, Copyright Registration for Motion Pictures:
If Haunted Studios has, as they claim, sold their bird to Warner Bros. (which I’m not willing to accept at face value), it would suggest that the studio either doesn’t hold or claim a copyright on it, or they don’t consider the Haunted Studios bird to be a violation because it is sufficiently different.
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No such suggestion. Warner Bros. no longer owns the original statuette used in the 1941 motion picture; the prop disappeared years ago. That doesn’t mean they don’t own the copyright to its design.
:smack: Fixed links: Compare theirs to the real thing (the upper pictures).
Thanks for the cite on the inclusion of works within a larger work.
Hmm…
First of all, you’re mistaken. The on-camera bird is in the Warner Museum (cite) and the maker of the MK Falcon went to see it in person for reference. Another original lead copy presumably belongs to the heirs of actor William Conrad.
But I don’t get your point. Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. The presence of (by my count) at least five or six different (and presumably) unlicensed versions of the Falcon suggests to me that Warner Bros. doesn’t know about them (unlikely IMO), or doesn’t care, or has no cause for action. The statement I made in the passage you quoted above was intended to support (weakly, I know) the last of those three possibilities. I don’t understand what the existence or non-existence of the original has to do with that.
IOW, if the Haunted Studios bird is, as I strongly suspect, unauthorized, and they had sold one to the president of Warner, we would have to assume that Warner had no case: either the bird isn’t protected under copyright or is different enough not to be considered a violation. (Of course, for all we know they sold it to a Warner parking lot attendant, or to no one at Warners.)
However, I think Gfactor’s link on substantial similarity (of which I have only read a part) answers my question. If, in fact, the dingus is really covered under copyright (and I grant that it probably is, on the basis of Walloon’s cite) then all of these copies are “substantially similar” and are in violation.
So my final question: If I buy one of these copies, am I, as purchaser, in any way liable? (Legally, I mean. We’ll leave the ethics out of this for now.) Does my knowledge (or ignorance) about its being in violation make a difference?
Not civilly liable. You’d only be liable for infringement.
But the copy could be seized and impounded.
Again, you would probably not be criminally liable for infringement.
OTOH, under some circumstances, you could be found guilty of conspiracy, complicity, or even misprision.
Gfactor: Did you miss this part: “If I buy one of these copies, am I, as purchaser, in any way liable?”
I’m talking about buying one of the cheap knockoffs, not making my own. A buyer, even if he suspects the copy is a fake, isn’t an infringer, is he?
No. A buyer would not be civilly liable for infringement, even if the buyer knew for a fact that the object was infringing. Sorry if I was not clear before.
But remember, the phony would be subject to seizure.
It has nothing to do with sweat of the brow. The point is that you have had access to the original copyrighted work. So long as you have seen the original work and what you have created yourself is substantially similar to that work, then you have copied the work. How you went about doing it is irrelevant.
This is something like what I was trying to suggest with my first post – there is a possibility that Warner Bros. either has no copyright interest to assert or has chosen not to, but that isn’t something you can count on and your further comments illustrate how unlikely it is.
A purchaser of an infringing copy is not liable.
I think you’re misunderstanding what I wrote. You and I are in agreement. As I said, the Supreme Court has rejected a “sweat of the brow” defense in copyright infringement cases. It declared that defense to be irrelevant.