Digital Models not subject to copyright 1
Submitted
by
MonsterMagnet
MonsterMagnet writes "The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has affirmed a ruling that a plain, unadorned wireframe model of a Toyota vehicle is not a creative expression protected under US copyright law. The court analogized the wire-frame models to photographs: the owner of an object does not have a copyright in all images of the object, but a photographer may have a limited copyright over a particular image based on artistic choices such as costumery, lighting, posing, etc. Thus, the modelers could only copyright any "incremental contribution" they made to Toyota's vehicles; in the case of plain models, there was nothing new to protect. This could be a two-edged sword — companies that produce goods may not be able to stop modelers from imaging those products, but modelers may not be able to prevent others from copying their work.
News article; IP360 article (subscription required); the Tenth Circuit's ruling is here"
News article; IP360 article (subscription required); the Tenth Circuit's ruling is here"
That sound you hear.... (Score:2)
Is millions of wireframe models being yanked from the Internet. Gentlemen... start your Blenders!
Actually, apparently the court ruled that the modellers didn't own the copyright because it's a representation of Toyota's design. I doubt if you got hold of this mesh and published it that you could avoid getting sued by Toyota.
Oh, and I wonder if it will grow the market for this clever device. [blogspot.com] From the article's description of how they modeled the cars, they could have used a big version of this.
While we