Slashdot Mirror
Digital Models Not Subject To Copyright
MonsterMagnet writes "The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has affirmed (PDF) a ruling that a plain, unadorned wireframe model of a Toyota vehicle is not a creative expression protected under 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."
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.
While we're on the subject... where's a great free library of blender-compatible models?
I hear some clever japanese gents are working on autogenerating wireframe models from multiple pictures like you find on Google street view as well.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Will this mean racing games can finally include all the awesome cars they want, and GT can finally do proper damage sim. without risking lawsuit?
No kitty, this is my pot pie!
There goes my rights to my collection of wire frame models of cages.
I thought that stuff was gonna be gold.
As someone who has done an amount of 3d modelling, that's fine by me. It's kind of hard to claim full copyright on a point-cloud. Take Bethoven's Head for instance. It is iconic because of how often it has appeared - despite it originally being a commercial model from Viewpoint, IIRC. The head as a model however is only a few hundred points relative to each other - it is trivial to copy and disseminate raw 3D data.
The truth is that the model or wireframe is only useful if it is utilized.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Um. No. The last unsupported statement in the summary is at least half wrong: "companies that produce goods may not be able to stop modelers from imaging those products."
This case says nothing about this point. The companies may have copyrights, design patents, trademarks, etc. The fact that someone hired to make lifelike reproductions using wire meshes has no copyright in the work doesn't mean that no one has rights in it.
In any event, the real effect is pretty obvious: modelers should just charge MORE for their work so that they're fully compensated for the work product purchased by the company. Meshworks made a mistake in this case; they assumed that their work would be a loss-leader for the other portion of the work awarded to another company.
As for racing games, assuming that the modeling is done in-house, there will be no effect on price. If its done by a thrid party, it'll be MORE expensive (a cost ultimately passed along to you, the consumer).
Not just racing games, but any game with models based off real objects. I'm glad to see an end brought to stupidity like this.
Finally! The loophole we've all been waiting for! Yeah, baby! Re-encode your MP3's and AVI files into WIREFRAMES! We'll work on developing the player later. Let Freedom Ring!
Blessed with all the brains that God gave a duck's ass, and twice the charisma.
...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.
Sounds like win-win to me.
What?
Not likely. Since game companies are making money off the images of the cars. It doesn't seem like a particularly big deal for game companies to get brand name cars in their games though. It's just a matter of paying for the licenses, which considering the kind of money game companies pull in these days is a pittance.
T
I have nothing compelling to say
"There's a lot more effort and time going into creating our images."
As many "I play a lawyer on slashdot" readers know, copyright has little or nothing to do with the amount of work that goes into producing it, and everything to do with being a creative work.
There was an important decision sometime in the early 90s if phonebooks were protected under copyright. IIRC it was a case where an independent publisher wanted to create a conglomerate phonebook for multiple different phone companies in the area. He got permission from all of the companies except one. The publisher went on and published the entries anyway, without permission. The phone company sued, with a similar argument about the amount of work that went into it. They lost, and the court rejected the notion that arranging the names in alphabetic order was a creative work.
My dumb former Governor, Jesse Ventura tried to claim his name was protected by either copyright or trademark, mainly because it's a stage name. Obviously he lost that one.
AccountKiller
If they're likening it TO a photograph... then it IS copyrightable just as professional photographers have a copyright to their photographs of "public" buildings. So, like a photograph of a building, you can't prevent the sell of that photograph. But it'll probably require another court case to affirm that the photograph itself IS copyrightable. (or in this case the model)
Make your own for a grand. Was in last month's Make Magazine from O'Rielly. All you have to do is write the software and add another camera to make it a trinocular. Same setup from the magazine would get you more than half way there.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Yeah, I'll get right on that. Maybe some nice slashdotter will volunteer, for Sourceforge fame?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R_Dnvvj8xA
No, because it's almost always trademark issues that make racing games license with car manufacturers. Sure, you can model a car if you like without any license whatsoever (and generally arcade racers do exactly that -- it's not like you can't tell exactly which car each "generic" racer in Burnout is supposed to be). But you can't call it a Ford GT and use their livery without a license, because the names of the cars and the logos and distinctive color schemes are generally trademarked. Folks playing a racing sim want that level of authenticity.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
For a long time now, I've wondered about license or copyright on the community models for a game like, e.g., Neverwinter Nights, who owns the copyright? If this is to be believed, no one does. Maybe now we can get an open source MMORPG that looks decent. Of course, the bitmaps are images so are probably copyrighted, which is a huge part of the work but maybe there's hope.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
you can't copyright a physical shape, and patents don't protect content, trademarks only protect in the same market, and wireframe computer models are not the same market as an automobile
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
If wireframes were copyrightable, then an evil version of Project Gutenberg (perhaps Google Books?) could recopyright old books in perpetuity, with the only versions not retaining copyright being the physical ones that are turning into dust.
Now that's the kind of shit that pisses me off.
Blatant abuse of the DMCA. Yay!
The headline says that the wireframes are not subject to copyright, and that the judge used an analogy to photographs. But photographs are subject to copyright, so I'm very confused. From the article, it sounds like Toyota re-used the wireframes over and over and the company sued. But if the company has the equivalent copyright to a photograph, then they should win. Toyota would have to license each distribution of the copy. That doesn't mean that all possible wire frames of those cars are owned by the company, but certainly their copies are.
Either way, it sounds like this only applies to completely unadorned wireframe meshes, which won't apply to games or 3D art or anything. So I don't think this ruling is too much to worry about. It probably means that this company needs to change their pricing model so that they sell their services, instead of licensing the resulting model. It really sucks to find this out after they did the contract, and it is really smarmy that Toyota pulled this on them then went legal on them.
The summary is wrong. The court did not determine that digital models are not subject to copyright. They merely decided that these particular wireframe models (of Toyota vehicles) were not - in and of themselves - original works of authorship in which new copyright privileges rest with the modelers (MeshWerks).
The vehicle designer (Toyota) retains its design patents on the vehicles and the presumptive copyright on any creative expression reflected in the design of their vehicles. The models here are clearly derivative works. The court ruled nothing substantially new was added to grant new rights to the modelers. However, Toyota designed the vehicles, that design is reflected in immaculate detail in the models, and as such the models presumably may not be copied without Toyota's permission, barring some sort of fair use exception.
This decision rests on a landmark Supreme Court precedent called Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service (1992), in which the Court held that the lists of names, addresses, and phone numbers in telephone directories were compilations of facts not creative works of authorship protectable by copyright.
This decision opens new ground, however, suggesting that much of the contents of any comprehensive digital model of the real world (digital maps come to mind) may not be independently protectable by copyright to the degree that those contents are intended to accurately reflect pre-existing reality rather than the creative selection or arrangement of the creator.
I'm unclear. (TFA doesn't make it clear.)
Obviously, the company that made the model doesn't own the copyright on the shape. That, I honestly expected. But does this mean that (in this case,) Toyota doesn't hold the copyright on the raw shape, either?
i.e. I could go and create a car that has 100% the visible shape of the Toyota Prius, but as long as I change enough details (maybe a full-top glass roof, get rid of the hatchback, and obviously not use any Toyota trademarks,) that it would be 100% legal?
So how does this bode for the famous "Coca Cola bottle shape"?
While the raw shape apparently can't be copyrighted, would it still be covered under trademark?
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
For anyone who actually creates wireframe models they would know that there is creativity and expression within the way in which they are arranged by the artist. I'm going to assume the judge didn't actually open up the copyrights to the degree implied in the article. If the judge did... it needs to be overturned ASAP.
Yes, trademarks on shapes are a completely different issue. This didn't have anything to do with Toyota's trademark on the appearance of the cars, which they still have. The only thing decided here is a re-affirmation that "sweat of brow" labor with 0 creative content is not copyrightable.
The modelling firm merely made duplicates of existing objects. If they had created concept cars from scratch, almost-the-same knock-offs, or made a pixar flick about cars, then they would have some form of copyright to their new, creative output. No creation, no copyright.
And even if you do have some copyrightable production, the owners of any trademarked or copyrightable material you use in it still have their rights. Make a Coke bottle sex toy with logo and everything, Coke sues and probably wins. If it just has the right curviness... Eh, maybe then too.
This could be a two-edged sword â" 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."
These are both good things.
Who in their right mind would want to create a car in the likeness of a Prius?
Just in time for 'Limbo of the Lost' (developed by Majestic and sold in the U.S by Tri Synergy), I guess, since all the buildings/etc. are models?
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/18/1938223
So... what would this mean for companies with architects, mechanical engineers, and anyone else who use computers to model/design parts for everything from automobiles to buildings?
Anyone who wants to cash in on the "trendiness" of the Prius. The unusual shape is probably 50% responsible for the popularity of the Prius. It looks different, so someone looking at it knows it's a hybrid. Unlike the Civic, (now discontinued) Accord, Escape, Camry, and Highlander hybrids. Those may be better cars, and may look better, but they don't scream out "I'm a Hybrid, I'm cool!" the way the Prius does. (To some people, anyway.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
"The company covered each vehicle with a grid of tape, took measurements at each intersection point and then used the figures to generate a digital image resembling a wire-frame model."
The court affirmed that the representation on the screen/printouts they saw weren't copyrightable. Can't argue with that. They should have stressed that they copyrighted the raw data file (1's, 0's, etc.), which was clearly an original work based off the physical object.
That's one take. The "unusual" shape may get it some extra attention, but I think most people's first impression of the looks is not a positive one. Larry David drove one in his improv semi-reality show "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and there were many cracks about his "ugly car".
Also, it's a well-known marketing ploy to flaunt a negative characteristic of a product as proof that it's really good (e.g. bad tasting cough syrup). The Prius would be easier to dismiss if it was just ordinary looking. Then to many it would be just another slow overpriced car. But make it stand out (one way or another), and people will wonder "what's up with that car?"
This decision cites Bridgeman vs. Corel favorably. Four times. This is important.
The key decision on "originality" in US copyright law is Feist vs. Rural Telephone. The information in lists, like telephone directories, is not a creative work and is copyrightable. You can scan in the phone book, load it into a database, and make it available on the web. Feist was a U.S. Supreme Court decision, and it created the third-party phone book industry, then made possible much useful repurposing of existing data. The decision in Feist stems from the Constitutional definition of copyright: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The Supreme Court ruled that originality is required.
Based on Feist, a district court ruled, in Bridgeman vs. Corel, that photos of public domain paintings are not copyrightable. This opened the door to much free reuse of photos of old images, such as famous old artworks. There was much griping about Bridgeman from the museum community, one of the gripes being that it was "only" a district court decision. Well, now we have the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals saying not only that Bridgeman is good law (see p.18 of the decision), but that the concept in Bridgeman extends to 3D models of existing objects. So that's settled in US law.
Ever hear of a design patent?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
A wireframe of an existing object should be akin to a performance of a known song. While that song is still copyrighted, the new performance thereof is still original art and should be copyrighted by its performer.
Besides, it's a rather dubious ruling in general. How close must the wireframe be to count as an exact model? Where's the line between exact recreation and sufficient modification? I'm not proficient enough in US law, but in Germany, whatever you create something in whatever medium has your copyright on it (as long as it is minimally creative, which would clearly be the case here). The right to distribute and make money off of it, however, is another question. Does US law not make such a distinction?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Why didn't Toyota's ad firm just ask for the CAD files? Wouldn't that have been quicker and cheaper? or even just use real vehicles in the ad campaign? I thought ad execs like to think they are really clever.
While your interpretation may well be true in the courts, it is quite far from the main justification of trademark law: to prevent confusion of customers. No customer would be confused that a racing game is trying to sell them a Ford GT, so trademark law should not be involved.
Probably not. The summary is misleading. The decision was simply that the wireframe models don't qualify for copyright protection as a separate entity. It's similar to how I can make a photocopy of a picture. I don't gain any rights to it under copyright. The original artist still retains his copyright though and that will cover the copy I make.
So while the company that made these wireframes have no rights to them, Toyota probably do because they own the copyright on the original.
Actually, AFAIK, models never were the problem in racing games. Trademarks were.
There are already games like Tokyo Xtreme Racer which have models of actual cars, but call them something else than the trademark. E.g., "Mazda RX-7 Type RZ" becomes "FD3RKK" and if you look closely on the car, it says "Madda". Others are even less obfuscated, so for example a Porsche Carrera 964 Turbo becomes "964T" and a Dodge Viper GTS is called "VGTS". But otherwise, the car looked exactly like the real thing. (Well, at least until you went Rice-Boy on it, and installed a huge wing, funky lights, decals, etc;)
It's when you use someone else's trademark to make money out of it, that they start getting their panties in a knot. And are even legally required to defend their trademark or lose it.
And although around these parts both are lumped together under "OMG, IP is bad", trademarks are really a different thing and have a very different legal status. This ruling only said anything about copyright. If your game calls a car, say, "Toyota Celica GT-Four 1998", you still have a trademark problem and you have to license it from Toyota. Likely still on their terms. If you call it something like "ST205" like in TXR, though, now it's even official that Toyota has no rights over your 3D model of it.
Again, the problem never was risk of lawsuit over showing their car crumpled, or everyone who ever published photos of an accident would be equally at risk. The problem was that you have to sign a contract with the manufacturer to use their trademark. And being a contract, it contains whatever conditions are acceptable to both. If you breach the terms of the contract, well, you'll likely get sued for that, not for copyright. Plus, as a bonus, you've just shot yourself in the foot: that's one license you won't get for the sequel. Being that they bought each other like crazy over time, that could mean a lot of cars you won't be able to license in the next game.
All things considered, though, it probably won't change much. Those trademarks are what gets more than half the players to play that game. So Sony, EA and the gang will continue to license them from the trademark owner, and still have to agree to a bunch of conditions in the process.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
you can copyright the representation of a physical shape I would say. As in a painting, your version of that shape is yours. Though with this issue I think the problem is whether toyota straight out owns the right to anything that looks like their car? I dunno sounds dumb. To me a 3d model is the same as a painting. It is just a representation of something. Its not like toyota is suing for someone building copies of their car and selling them, competing with the auto industry!
Balderdash!
If they have one, on the real shape. However, the creation of the model isn't Toyota's copyright either, since it really IS a photograph (in 3d and without the skin on) and so covered in copyright (or fair use) as a photograph of the car would be.
If you make a wireframe model of the toyota yourself to fit the iconic image (which often requires you enhance some features that say "Toyota Celica" and tone down some others) then this is different. It's more like making a derived version of a car. It could be likened more to a painting of the car, where you ought to be evoking the idea of the car rather than a technical drawing which is delineating it.
Viewpoint gave away several models at SigGraph. Beethoven was one of them, along with 57Chevy, Al The Gangster, etc.
That pink 57Chevy model going around? I colored that from the original .obj file. I wonder if this ruling means I'm suddenly a millionaire.
No sig today...
here's how this is utterly stupid in many ways:
1st, toyota already has 3d models of its vehicles because they FUCKING DESIGNED THEM!
2nd, meshwerx could have just employed workers skilled enough to make duplicates from photos.
3rd, even if they had used photos, the copyrights would be nil because it's a derivative work of a copyrighted photo.
4th, meshwerx is pretty stupid to think they they owned the 3d mesh of a vehicle they didn't design.
5th, they should have sued for breach of contract, if it was a breach of contract.
6th, and finally, the headline is not applicable in this instance because the models were derivative, not original work.
game developers have nothing to worry about, their assets are still copyrighted. Except for majestic studios of course, they're screwed.
They're using their grammar skills there.
This sounds like a win-win situation to me! Damn, people, do you have to be all "it's mine, so I get to let it fall to ruin and forbid you from using it, just because I can" all the time?
Not exactly the same issue but closely related: There are similar cases about 3D models at the stock model site Turbo Squid. Lockheed Martin claimed that a 3D model of their B-24 Bomber constitutes a "trademark infringement". The Ford Motor Company has abused DMCA copyright takedown orders on 3D representations to enforce their trademark claims on their real-world vehicles as well. This incorrect use of DMCA has been going on at Turbo Squid for years. http://www.johnmacneill.com/WWII_Bomber.html At least the EFF made Lockheed withdraw its trademark claim on the B-24 model. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05/b-24-liberated
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Why then, in order to use the "Ferrari red" in a farm tractor one apparently has to buy rights from Ferrari? Or is it just in the case of one mentioning the usage of the said shade of red?
There are also design rights. If you try to produce and sell perfect replacement parts for recent cars, you're going to get sued. The company is almost certainly still going to have the unique manufacturing rights to those designs.
For the case of the Coca Cola bottle shape, the company would probably have design rights (preventing you from manufacturing), plus trademark rights (they use the shape as a distinctive trading identification, like a logo or a trading name), and might also be able to sue you for "passing off", that is, making a product that would be liable to make buyers reasonably expect that it came from a manufacturer other than yourself. If you try to sell cola in a bottle that looks too much like an existing "Coke" bottle, or even if you create a new "Coke-ish" bottle design for your cola that might look to buyers like it's an "official" variation on the design, then you're liable to end up in court under the "passing off" rule.
Eric Baird
Bringing this into the physical world, this decision seems to imply that there is less artistry in a lifelike sculpture than one that is warped or otherwise stylized. In that light, the question seems to be whether craftsmanship (the ability and effort to create a lifelike replica) and artistry (less well defined but protected by copyright) are equivalent. Failure of craftsmanship has traditionally been passed off as artistry, but I don't think I've ever seen people punished for displaying a level of craftsmanship such that they can no longer do that.
That already exists. It's called real life. I realise this is news for most slashdotters.
No, seriously, the modeling-from-photographs part already exists and it's called photogrammetry. But, just as a human needs multiple points of view to avoid making mistakes, so will (do) computers; there just isn't enough information in a single 2D photo, unless every single object in the scene is "known" (which rather limits the use of the system).
As to the rest, you'd have to couple photogrammetry with object identification and a (really, really, really good) physics simulation. Oh, and AI good enough to figure out the consequences of your actions in that "virtual world that's just like the real world", meaning the "supercomputer" would have to a) be able to simulate the minds of all the people in the "game" and b) it would have to be able to simulate itself (since it's part of the "real world"). Good luck with that.
Anyway, the real question is: what for? Do you really want to be able to change your point of view during a movie (insert pr0n joke here)? That's why good directors and cinematographers get the big bucks: to make that choice for you, and deliver a "message" through a consistent work. Pan the camera up during the first scene and you solve the murder mystery in 2 minutes. Not much fun.
Maybe one day computers will be able to analyse Van Gogh's sunflowers and deliver a 3D model of real sunflowers, plus some paint, some paintbrushes, and a large bottle of absinthe, so you can paint them from any other angle... :-P
There goes my job prospects producing literary works like this:
o cube1
#64 vertices, 60 faces
v -9.50000000 -1.00000000 1.00000000
v -9.50000000 1.00000000 1.00000000
v -7.50000000 1.00000000 1.00000000
v -7.50000000 -1.00000000 1.00000000
v -9.50000000 -1.00000000 -1.00000000
v -9.50000000 1.00000000 -1.00000000
v -7.50000000 1.00000000 -1.00000000
v -7.50000000 -1.00000000 -1.00000000
v -5.50000000 1.00000000 1.00000000...
Oh noes! Teh courts can't tell the difference between proprietary and free! We should be able to copy Toyota wireframes because Toyota is Evil Corp, but Toyota can't use our mods on the wireframe because we put them under teh GPL. Next thing you know, some dumb judge will say it's okay for RIAA to do mashups of our mashups!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I would say that I am in the industry. But, I am no lawyer and dont know everything that is going on with this specific issue. One case like this and the dynamics of the flow of money for art changes. Some people would be either out of a job or get paid more.
Balderdash!
...to the RIAA's digital business model?
Oh, wait. No one's trying to copy that.
That was my point exactly. Regardless of wether the viewer considers the look good or bad, it is distinctive. And it is the distinctiveness that is partly responsible for its popularity.
You see it, you *KNOW* it's a "trendy hybrid". (Watch out for that smug, though.)
Disclaimer: I am a Prius driver, but I got mine before it was "trendy", and bought it about 50% for the environment, 50% for the technology. Money savings was never a factor in my calculations, and "coolness" wasn't, either. (I promptly showed it off to my geeky friends for the tech-factor, but didn't make a big deal to, for example, my non-geek mom. Because I knew that, to her, it was just another car. It was only after it started becoming trendy that my mom even noticed.) I am split on the design. I do like the 'futuristic' feel of it, but am not a fan of the hatchback design.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
What's wrong with good old 'compared'? Is it just old hat?
Trade secrets, most likely. I know that anyone doing BMW ads gets the CATIA files, but they're locked down in biohazard-grade NDAs.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.