How different does something have to be so it doesn&#39;t infringe on a copyright? I'm an engineer and I wanted to make a toy for my 3 year old daughter for Christmas. She loves Little Einsteins but since that was 12 years ago, they don't really make many of the toys anymore. Any that are still available are held by collectors and sell at a premium ($100+ for a smaller one). I wanted to make her Leo's baton as that is her favorite character. I have a 3D printer and making something like that won't be an issue. My idea is making something that resembles it physically but not identically and has a few buttons that will play a couple of soundbites from the show when pressed (the baton on the show does not do that). It won't have any logos, iconography, or anything tying it to the show on the outside. If it's a legal issue, I can just change the soundbites to something generic but it would mean more to her for it to be a Little Einsteins thing. Will the physical likeness itself be a possible enfringement? This isn't something I would be selling or making money off of and since they aren't produced, the toy isn't easy to come by. NB: if I'm not stepping on any toes and make it as described for my daughter, could I document the build and put it online (a blog or social media)? Could I share the 3D model* on a website under the Creative Commons License (no money or anything is gained)? I'm sorry if this seems like a dumb question, I'm not familiar with copyright law and I don't want to get myself in any trouble. *Models are required for 3D printing
There are two aspects in which similarity enters the infringement analysis: As evidence of copying, and When determining whether what was copied was enough to be infringement Let's take it for granted that you've based your item off of Leo's baton. So, your question is about similarity at the second stage, after copying has been established. All US courts use &quot;substantial similarity&quot; as the test for this stage. (This can be confusing, because some courts use the same phrase for the amount of similarity required in the first stage, to establish that copying happened). Substantial similarity can arise even when taking only a small percentage of the original, especially if you've taken the &quot;heart&quot; of the work. (Harper &amp; Row v. Nation Enterprises 471 U.S. 539 (1985) - where 300-400 words of a 7500 word manuscript were taken). Various circuits have developed their own specific tests that juries should use to assess substantial similarity. In the 9th Circuit, two cases that highlight their approach to similarity between works of art are: Sid &amp; Marty Krofft Television Prods. v. McDonald’s Corp., 562 F.2d 1157 (9th Cir.1977) Pasillas v. McDonald’s Corp., 927 F.2d 440 (9th Cir.1991) Krofft established a two-part test that separates idea and expression, such that copyright in a piece of art would not preclude people from taking that idea, but would protect the particular expression. You are not prohibited from making a baton, even if your inspiration was Leo's baton. However, if you take too much of the particular expression of Leo's baton, that crosses into substantial similarity. Whether you've taken too much is a question for the jury. &quot;There is no special standard of similarity required in the case of 'things'.&quot; Pasillas uses the Krofft test to judge whether two masks are substantially similar. Given that both parties conceded that their works both shared the same idea, the court could skip to &quot;whether the masks' expressions of that idea are substantially similar&quot;. But, it incorporated elements of another line of cases that further precluded a finding of infringement when expression necessarily follows from idea. [w]hen idea and expression coincide, there will be protection against nothing other than identical copying of the work no substantial similarity may be found under the intrinsic test where analytic dissection demonstrates that all similarities in expression arise from the use of common ideas elements of expression that necessarily follow from the idea receive no copyright protection the court concluded that the similarities between the toy dinosaurs — their postures, body designs, and cuddly softness — all derived from the idea of a stuffed toy dinosaur, and accordingly found no substantial similarity of expression all of these similarities derive from the common idea of a mask depicting the man in the moon. Pasillas simply cannot rely on these standard elements to satisfy the intrinsic test of substantial similarity of expression When creating a baton, there are certain elements of the expression that are inseparable from or are standard elements of the idea. It needs to be narrow. It is standard to have a handle. The handle is often a different color. In summary: Just because you saw the baton, and decided to make a baton based on what you saw, that isn't necessarily infringement. If you take too much of the particular expression of Leo's baton, that will be infringement. The answer to that question is case-by-case, and left to the jury. &quot;Obviously, no principle can be stated as to when an imitator has gone beyond copying the idea, and has borrowed its expression. Decisions must therefore inevitably be ad hoc.&quot; - Judge Learned Hand
I can see two points you might be confused about in your question. 1. Works can be in the public domain without having a CC license The Wikipedia statement and the government statement are not inconsistent with each other; just because something isn't available under a Creative Commons license doesn't necessarily mean that it is restricted by copyright. In fact, CC licenses are moot for material in the public domain: When a work is in the public domain, it is free for use by anyone for any purpose without restriction under copyright law. Public domain is the purest form of open/free, since no one owns or controls the material in any way. ... Creative Commons licenses do not affect the status of a work that is in the public domain under applicable law, because our licenses only apply to works that are protected by copyright. So if a work is in the public domain, you can use it for whatever purpose you wish (though see below), without restriction or attribution. This is less restrictive than the various Creative Commons licenses, which require various levels of attribution, non-modification, etc. depending on the license chosen by the creator. 2. Trademark protections are separate from copyright protections Your quote from the government website implies that these logos might be trademarked, even if they're not under copyright; this is entirely possible. Roughly speaking, trademark protections keep other people from trading on your good name &amp; reputation; copyright protections keep other people from directly profiting from your creative endeavors. If another party creates a product that uses a trademark in a way that would create confusion among consumers, the trademark holder can sue for that. Depending on how you use the logos, you might run afoul of these protections. See this Q&amp;A for futher details under US law. (Australian law may differ a bit but I would expect that the general principles are the same.)
Public domain means that there is no (longer) copyright in the given work. This means that all rights associated with copyright are not controlled by anyone and there is no way to run afoul of copyright laws (note that in some countries a true &quot;public domain&quot; doesn't exist). Assuming you're correct that these works are in public domain, answers to your particular questions are: Does that mean I can play the video's as much as I want to any size crowd I wanted? Could I charge money to watch the videos? Yes and yes. If something is in the public domain does that mean all the parts of that thing are? This kind of begs the question. A work in public domain has no copyright in it. If one of its part has copyright, then it's not really public domain is it? What about the characters in the videos, could I make a new Bugs Bunny or Might Mouse animation on my own? If I wanted to use Popeye or Betty Boop or daffy duck in a video game could I? Copyright isn't your issue here, trademarks are. The characters are most likely trademarked, meaning you generally can't use them in your own works without licensing.
Not copyright as such because that is about protecting a 'work' — a voice is not a 'work'. As the court said in one of the following examples, &quot;A voice is not copyrightable. The sounds are not 'fixed.'&quot; (You could copyright a roar or a yell — some kind of fixed arrangement of sound(s).) But some jurisdictions have recognised property rights in voices and/or that the voice is protected by the person's 'right of publicity' (the right to control the commercial exploitation of their identity, of which the voice is a part). For example: Bette Wins Ruling In ‘Sound-Alike’ Lawsuit - AP News June 23, 1988 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ A federal appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit filed by entertainer Bette Midler after an advertising agency allegedly tried to duplicate her voice and singing style in one of its ad campaigns. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled Wednesday that Midler could pursue her suit against the Ford Motor Co. and the Young &amp; Rubicam advertising agency. The court said certain personal attributes - such as a voice - can be considered property rights, protected by state law. ... U.S. District Judge Ferdinand Fernandez said Young &amp; Rubicam acted like ″the average thief″ but dismissed Midler’s suit, saying no law prohibits imitation of a singer’s voice. But the appeals court disagreed. &quot;A voice is as distinctive and personal as a face,″ the appeals court said. ″When a distinctive voice of a professional singer is widely known and is deliberately imitated in order to sell a product, the sellers have appropriated what is not theirs.&quot; judgment in Midler v Ford Another case in the US is Waits v Frito-Lay Inc. The US Court of Appeal found that a radio commercial's imitation of the voice of Tom Waits constituted a civil tort, &quot;voice misappropriation&quot;. I'm not aware of any cases involving computer synthesis of voices.
There seems, to my ear, to be a degree of similarity between the first two works. The third does not sound, to me, very similar to either of the first two. That is not a legal question, and I am no expert. However, all of these seem to be simple themes of only a few notes, repeated, in one case with some variations. The history of music is replete with examples of short themes or figures duplicated without intentional copying. Generally, to win a copyright suit over a claimed infringement of a musical copyright one must show either proven direct copying, or identity of melody over a long enough passage that independent invention is not plausible. Normally access of the alleged infringer to the claimed source is also shown. How much identity is needed is a judgement call for the court involved, often based on expert testimony, but I rather doubt if the short themes linked in the question would be found to infringe one another. In any case, even if identity is proved, it is possible that both are copying some earlier source, perhaps one in the public domain, or one properly licensed. It is also possible that one of thee has obtained a license from another and so is perfectly legal. There is no way to know without the records of those involved.
If the "Pokeball" image is copyrighted and/or a trademark of Nintendo/whoever makes the Pokemon games, then whoever put that image out there under CC 3.0 BY is in violation and can be sued and will probably lose, and you would be in violation and can be sued and will probably lose. Your penalty would almost certainly be less since your violation was "innocent", that is, you had no way of knowing that the "Pokeball" imagery was somebody's protected intellectual property. ... Except you kind of maybe should know that, unless whoever made the Pokemon games (Nintendo or other) put the image out there and you can verify that, that maybe this license could be bogus and you should consult with who you imagine the owner of that IP may be or an impartial professional who could tell you for sure. I'm thinking if it were me I would do a little more research - and maybe get a paid opinion - if I was really thinking about using this for any but private purposes.
You can’t use pictures You can’t use any of these, nor can you make your own art that is derived from these. That’s copyright infringement and there is no fair use defence because you are specifically trying to do something Nintendo already does. You can reproduce that stats of the Pokémon because stats are facts (even if they are facts about fictional things) and facts are not protected by copyright.
Yes, you may The layout of the board and its appearance are not protected by copyright, because they are not expressions or any other type of copyrightable content. Even if they were (say if some protested art was displayed on the board) you are displaying this for instructional purposes, and not harming any market for the board, so fair use is likely to apply (in the U.S.). The device could be protected by patent, but you are not copying or imitating the board, nor showing anyone how to do so, so that would not apply. You are not selling or advertising the board, nor knock-offs of it, so trademark protection would not apply, even if a protected trademark is visible on th board. Just in case, be sure to make clear that your video is not authorized or endorsed by the maker of the board.