Reply To: Interesting Copyright Infringement

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You can’t copyright anything, only claim ownership of it. Unlike trademarks and patents which need to be registered, copyright is an inherent right granted to creative works purely by virtue of their creation. It only covers elements of the work which can be considered original, lasts for a fixed period of time, and can be transferred by the owner to another party. As the name suggests, it is literally the right to make copies and only the copyright holder and those they grant permission to have the right to make any copies of the original work. This includes across creative formats and is why you have to have permission from Joanne Rowling to make Harry Potter movie, or a range of Harry Potter miniatures, even though her creative works were in a different creative format. You don’t need her permission to do a movie about a boarding school for wizards as that is not original to her work. The specific expression of it is original and you do need permission to copy that.

What’s most interesting about this story is that the license holder chose to pursue. This is a small industry in which this practice has often either evaded detection or been too small to bother with. It in turn has created the erroneous opinion amongst many in the industry that there is nothing wrong with doing it. Either because they can change the names and it won’t be infringement, or that making miniatures from other people’s art or stories is fine and should not be infringement.