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Digital Models Not Subject To Copyright

Posted by kdawson on from the but-this-is-a-supermodel dept.

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."

8 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. That sound you hear.... by symbolset · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  2. Racing games? by tehniobium · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

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    No kitty, this is my pot pie!
  3. Re:Racing games? by krakass · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  4. Make your own by linzeal · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

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    An Education is the Font of All Liberty
    1. Re:Make your own by SEGT · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Likely it is so expensive because the creators want to recoup development costs. Paying a staff $80,000 a year to create a new device with no proven market is a gamble. ZCorp probably did their research prior to development and found that there were enough clients willing to pay ridiculous sums of money because they can afford to and would get a lot of use out of such a device. Once a few sales go through to pull the project out of the red, or at the least closer to the black, you will see the price go down.

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      10: SIN 20: GOTO HELL
  5. open source 3D MMORPG by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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    Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
  6. Re:This decision reinforces Bridgeman vs. Corel by mdmkolbe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Could this effect the copyrighting of some software?

    For example, if I write the simple version of "Hello World" or "Quick Sort", am I adding anything original? What if I implement a (e.g. programing language) specification with exacting accuracy? Or what if I get "creative" with the spec would that give me more copyright protection? If someone later removes the creative aspects can they copy my "creative" implementation of the spec and avoid my copyright?

    Let the legal thought experiments begin.

  7. Re:Write the software... by robthebloke · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's really not that difficult to write the software. I managed to follow this paper and get it working in a few evenings....

    http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~ravir/cvpr07.pdf

    I only had a go after seeing that a guy on CG talk managed to do it (and he's an artist - not a programmer).... http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=109&t=636851