Have you ever wondered about the copyrights involved in our design work? The issue came up in conjunction with a special project involving uniformed dolls. This article is for informational purposes only and does not reflect the views of the CustomDolls Ezine or CustomDolls Onelist. We are providing this information as a tool to help make your designing an enjoyable process.

The copyright, the right to replicate an original work, belongs to the copyright holder.  Only the copyright holder has the right to duplicate the copyrighted work in any manner.

Let's use a sports team uniform for example. People who hold the copyrights or trademarks to those uniforms might be working on a venture with toy manufacturers to create some uniformed dolls.  They could consider a designer's duplication of their uniform detrimental to their licensing and rights, whether the designer realizes a profit or not. The designer is then infringing on the copyright.

The only exception is the Fair Use rules regarding the use of small works or small parts of works for study in a scholastic situation.  For example, in a teaching workshop, emailed copies of short stories are sent to students to critique.  The trick here is that they are distributed *only* to the students for the purpose of instruction.  They are not distributed to the public at large. 

If the designed item is not for personal amusement or a single gift created for friend or family then copyright issues apply.  Some are misinformed and think that infringement of copyright only lies in making a monetary profit for yourself. A logo used for publicity, whether personal or for a worthy cause or charity, can be considered a non-monetary profit from someone else's work.  Even celebrities have a right to control the reproduction of their faces (outside of journalism).


The good news:
It's perfectly possible that the uniform logos were never copyrighted or trademarked.  That would make them public domain. Also, if they were licensed under previous laws and were not re-registered their copyright may have lapsed.

One fine poet saw her work show up in an inspirational anthology by "Anonymous". It started circulating in handouts without her permission and her name got dropped off somewhere along the line.  She should have been consulted on the use of her work, and if she didn't like the anthology, her poem should never have appeared in it.  This is her right as a creative artist.  Now it is out of her hands, because there are hundreds of copies out there. This declares her work public domain, and plenty of people are unaware that it is not.  No one meant to profit at her expense, but she has lost the "fruits of her labor" because someone didn't understand about copyrights.