PSA: Some copyright facts you might find useful

5 min read

Deviation Actions

Nokkelborth's avatar
By
Nokkelborth
Published:
3.3K Views



So out of curiosity I went ahead and read the whole Copyright Law of The United States because I always had wondered if the US laws are different from my country's laws about copyright, but it seems they are the same, I previously took a course on IP stuff, so I also found it useful to refresh some knowledge I had acquired previously.

Here are some important highlights about copyright that I think are crucial for anyone, specially CS owners, to know!


1) You own the copyright of your work as soon as you create it

2) You do NOT need to be registered to be protected

3) Registering is recommended in case a lawsuit happens (so this basically means that if your project is big enough where you can actually afford suing someone, you should register)

4) You have the EXCLUSIVE rights to reproduce, distribute, perform, rent, lease, transfer ownership of the work and to authorize derivative works.

5) Copyright infringement penalties can get worse if you can prove the infringement was deliberate. They can also be lessened if proven to not be deliberate.

6) The determination of whether or not it was deliberate and punishable varies on a case-by-case basis
7) Unauthorized derivative works are copyright infringement

8) A derivative work is a work based on or derived from one or more existing works

9) A transformative work, however, is not copyright infringement, since it falls upon the "Fair use" clause. Most of the time you won't know if your work is considered transformative until you take it to court, but there are some key points in determining what counts as fair use:
"(1) the purpose and character of the work (i.e. the extent to which the work is transformative, not merely derivative of a earlier work), (2) the nature of the copyrighted work, (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."



Taken from www.copyright.gov/title17/ (this is a link to the whole copyright law, and also its individual sections), www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq… and cdas.com/how-much-is-too-much-… im not gonna put the direct quotes for each point because it's a pain in the ass
I do want to point out that the whole "design" section is NOT talking about character designs, but it is talking about industrial design, which is designs for things.


also if you are gonna try arguing with me im afraid i wont reply, i don't have the time for this. If you are a law student or a lawyer and wish to add to this journal or want me to correct something, PLEASE NOTE ME.  I don't want drama or people arguing in the comments section, this journal is merely informative so if I got something wrong just let me know through a note, preferably with quotes. English is not my mother language so I don't discard the possibility of having made a mistake, specially since it was all so hard to read.


thank u for ur time my friends i hope this was useful to some extent



© 2016 - 2024 Nokkelborth
Comments10
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Remi-Adopt's avatar
Remi-Adopt
Oh this is very interesting, thanks! As an industrial/product design student, I might aswell read into the link by myself later ;u;

--

I have done quite an amount of research when it comes to copyrighting a whole species when I had the first people complaining about why they couldn't just make one for themselves without paying OR joining raffles. The following infos should mostly be right, but don't quote me on stuff, it's been some time XD

From the things I found out, it was very clear that you cannot copyright* a whole species all together, but only the individual adoptable designs. This is because you cannot copyright whole concepts, especially if they are too generic. If I remember right, there was a case where Disney tried to sue Deadmau5 because they used "Mickey's" head shape, but they've lost since it was too generic. They just could not take copyright of every single mouse depiction in the world with 3 spheres as main shapes - but of course, they could copyright the character "Mickey Mouse" because of it's individuality (voice, clothes, personality, storyline he is in etc.).
So for species, you would have to trademark them. For small species that is surely not important and not worth the hassle. But if you have a very popular, ongoing species that you are very serious about and eventually want to sell merchandise in stores or branch out in other ways (TV shows, comics, games, etc.), it is a good way to start. However, this requires a lot of time, energy and money and lots of fighting, the concept of "closed species" is not very known or accepted as a "legitimate thing" in the real world after all. I mean it sure seems possible, I believe cinnadogs are trademarked by now and maybe a few other species, but things really have to be thought through and you have to make sure to not interfere with any other laws. I'm very sure that the trademark request won't go through if you sold adoptables based off copyrighted characters before too, it's always better to be safe than sorry in those kind of situations.

*copyright might be the wrong term, because you obviously get your basic copyrights as soon as you create something. I'm talking about that registered copyright, where you can use it to sue people/defend your rights if anyone copies your species.