Quote:
Originally Posted by alexeicrow
So,
All garage kits on sale and companies that sell models if they do not have official regonition or rights to do so are against the law.
I can only talk about crow figures as that is what i collect. I know for sure that there where 4 movie licensced statues (3 statues and one model kit)
The other i do nt know if they have a licensce or not. In that case how do you go about it. I mean NECA i think have bought the license to do the Crow, but whatabout the other compmanies. (I am not talking about garage kits possible not more than 100 pieces), but on teh mass porduced companies. I know that Dragonfly did their crows in collaboration with James O'barr, teh creator of the crow.
These are all legal issues as i guess james has the rights over the crow, but i think also many other poeple have the rights as well, like pressman who where involved in production of comics and film, miramax etc etc. It is a very hard line to define.
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I do not know the exact inter-relationships of the Crow's rights, but the general way it works is as follows:
Creator of character would own copyright and trademark unless he assigned it to a company. Owner of IP rights would be free to offer either an exclusive license or multiple non-exclusive licenses to others.
So Barr or the Comic company licensed the story to Miramax. Miramax may have had the ability to license merchandise from the movie or that may have been kept by Barr/Comic company. Additionally, Barr/Comic company likely maintained all rights with respect to the comic and merchandise based on it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by alexeicrow
On teh other hand i think that such companies should embrace people who do statues etc of tehir products as after all tehy giving more popularity to their characters and let's face it. The corportae license holder compnaies do not fulfill the collector's desire - they are more into teh finacaial gain of things - just me 2cent - i may be wrong
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Just touching upon this as I think it would involve a very lengthy answer:
While an unlicensed product may bring some popularity, the owner obviously has no say over the items being produced, including commenting on the control of the items. So if the market were flooded with cheap, poorly designed Crow statues, collectors could actually be turned off from seeking out true licensed products.
Also, thi sis all about money. A small creator like Barr suffers more than a large company when his IP rights are used without his permission. The character is not as popular and does not have as big a fan base, making it more difficult for him to compete.
There is a concept called policing your trademark which could come into effect if IP owners just turned a blind eye to everything. The gist of the policy is: if you don't protect your IP rights, you lose such rights. This can happen in multiple ways, the most common is when a trademark becomes generic - Kleenex for all facial tissues, Xerox for all photocopies etc. I have never seen that concept carried over to a statue or character of that nature, but am sure it is possible.
