[bhb]

I was just looking at JL DeCarlo's thread on 'The Godfather Cardroom' chips and I was wondering if anyone here either is or knows a Copyright Lawyer. We keep coming across issues of what can and can not be done on custom chips using well known, or copyrighted images. I thought it would be good to get a discussion going by anyone knowledgeable in the legal arena so that we can have a record and place to refer to when these things come up.

As a starting point, it is my understanding that if you want to scarf (scan from printed material, copy from .jpgs from the net, etc.) an image and print it on labels that you then put on your personal chips that are not sold, you can do pretty much anything you want (no one makes a profit so no money to split). The other extreme is I am 100% certain that palm imports is breaking the law by just posting the images, for potential custom chip designs, of the NFL teams, and work of some of the great artists on this forum.

Am I wrong, and where in that great grey spectrum in between does the law come down?

Thanks,
Bruce

Perception: It may not be true, but it is reality

[Grimace]

My guess, and that's all it is, is that it doesn't matter what we or our lawyers decide is copyright infringement, but rather what the chip manufacturer and their lawyers decide. If it's too risky they're not going to take the chance of losing a potentially large settlement even if you have a team of lawyers sign off on it.

[PocketRocket]

Originally Posted by bhb

I thought it would be good to get a discussion going by anyone knowledgeable in the legal arena so that we can have a record and place to refer to when these things come up.

It's been my experience that legal discussions on web forums and newsgroups at best have a little less value than the bandwidth that it occupies, and at worse it tends to spread misinformation, misguides readers, and perpetuates urban legends.

Originally Posted by bhb

As a starting point, it is my understanding that if you want to scarf (scan from printed material, copy from .jpgs from the net, etc.) an image and print it on labels that you then put on your personal chips that are not sold, you can do pretty much anything you want (no one makes a profit so no money to split). The other extreme is I am 100% certain that palm imports is breaking the law by just posting the images, for potential custom chip designs, of the NFL teams, and work of some of the great artists on this forum.

Your right to use copyrighted materials from the internet is something that is best discussed with a real lawyer in a real life situation. No attorney of any reasonable standing is going to blindly dispense general advice on a public forum that may be read world-wide, and the advice would undoubtedly not be applicable in many jusrisdictions. On the other hand, if you download something, print it yourself and only a limited number of people are aware of it, excluding the copyright holder, I think you can draw your own conclusion, regardless of whether or not you have infringed on the copyright. With regards to Palm Imports and Joe Daley, I think that's another issue where a reasonable person can draw the correct conclusion purely on the sleaze factor

Originally Posted by bhb

Am I wrong, and where in that great grey spectrum in between does the law come down?

That's a question that 9 wise people who sit behind a bench in Washington are perpetually trying to clarify

[Poboy]

I'm an artist, not a lawyer, so I've only learned a little about copyright stuff. Any image is the intellectual property of the creator, whether it has the little c or not. Copyrights expire after 50 years, so if you are using an image older than that, you are probably okay. Unless a person sells the rights to their property they continue to hold it, so anyone who's design appeared on palm's website could sue them. One can even sell the rights, but just for that particular use - like a chip production run, but still own it to put on T-shirts for example.

Basically unless one of your friends rats you out to whoever's copyright you infringed upon, you're not going to have a problem with a personal set, though technically I suppose you're still violating copyright.
Try and make a profit on it, and you'll probably draw the attention of the 'infringee'.

BTW, perception isn't reality, it just makes it irrelevant