Usage rights for a character made with Aiko 6
divyadeep2007
Posts: 15
in New Users
Hello guys,
If i were to make a character using the Aiko 6 pro bundle pack. Would i still retain the rights for that character's physical appearance. Its for a webcomic.Would i be able to use the character with that look for all future uses? I would of course make her look a bit different from Aiko 6.
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You would not have the exclusive rights if you used standard content to create it, other people could use the same morphs and textures of course, but you could use it to create 2D images and animations for distribution as your wished and you would have exclusive rights to anything you created yourself (moprhs made by directly editing the geoemtry, textures made in an image editor etc.).
What if in the future i were to recreate that character in a program like Blender? I know i would have the rights for the way that character is written and etc. would i get into legal trouble if i were to use the same likeness remodeled on my own? I dont have problems with other people using it. I just wanted to know if I would get into trouble for saying "this character that looks this way is mine".
You'd probably breach Trademark laws if you model something that looks precisely like Aiko 7. If you create something that has a rough resemblance to her, you'd probably be safe. But perhaps, you best take the question to Customer support. They are the only ones who can answer these questions for you. http://www.daz3d.com/help/help-contact-us
If you copied a Daz figure you would not thereby gain rights to it - it would still be a derivative work. But nor would you lose the rights you have while it is a directly modified Daz figure.
If I remember correctly from Character Design class.... which I might not, cause it was some time ago, so don't quote me on this... but it goes something like this:
Technically speaking, you have the right to any kind of character you create and storyline as long as its an original character. However your character has to be recognizable enough if you ever want to exercise your rights.
For that example: Mikey Mouse, Mario or Pikachu are very iconic. Its near impossible to mistake them for anybody else since they have several, unique and iconic traits. They basically pass something my teacher used to call the "Child Drawing Test". If a 5 year old used a few crayons to draw the character and then tried to tell you who that person is without saying their name, you will generally not mistake it for anyone else. After all, how many yellow, plump rats with red cheeks that shoot lightning do you know? With a zig-zag tail? On the other hand, if your character is just a "White Guy with a Gun", it will be near impossible to prove anybody is "stealing your character" as there are not enough iconic traits that the character has. Even if his name is Razak Gouki Serpenta al'Tokimaru. Someone else could just make "Joe" and it would work.
Normally, traditional art has it that a character has to be drawn and the unique drawing style is what helps recognize the character. Even a normal person, drawn in an unorthodox way, can become a character then.
In case of using 3D models, purchased in a store - this gets tricky. Unless you very heavily modify the character and add enough unique, visible traits to them, it will be hard to exercise any rights to them. Not to mention that you have completely no control over people who use the same assets to create the very same character. Mainly because you never HAD RIGHTS to a model. You buy a model from the store and are given sort of a license to USE the model, but you cannot pass those rights.
It's like if you bought rights to use Sonic characters in your comic. Even if you dress them and name them differently, put them in a different world and have them act out different roles - someone else could go to SEGA and get a license as well. And you can say NOTHING to the person, because you are not the one who owns Sonic and Company. You are just leasing them. And everybody around will recognize them as Sonic characters.
Creating an Aiko character in Blender changes nothing here to be honest. As long as it looks like Aiko 6 - it is Aiko 6. The program it was made in changes nothing. Even now, I could just export an .obj file of Aiko into Blender and that is STILL Aiko. And DAZ owns Aiko. Making her from scratch into Aiko would also not help - that is STILL Aiko, even if I went through a tedious process of rebuilding her in another program.
Speaking of - you do not need Blender for this. There are tons of morphs to buy in the store. You can create your own additions - morphs, clothes, geografts. If it converts Aiko 6 into a fully unique, recognizable character that cannot be easily copied - you got your character.
Basically, the very moment people look at the character and are not "That is Aiko 6" or "Girl 7", etc. - you are on the right track. But with purchased 3D assets - you will have a harder time. It is not impossible, but be aware its a bit more difficult than blending Aiko 6 with just 2 other morphs.
Well, I am going to modify her using morphs or whatever it takes to the point she doesnt look familiar to Aiko at all. I personally dont care if others make a similar character as long i wont have any legal trouble using my character for any purpose (not the mesh from daz). I just meant that appearance, that i used Daz and several morphs to create. I just want to make sure i can use the character trademark (not the mesh from Daz), her appearance that is all. She would look pretty different from Aiko.
People tend to put WAY too much emphasis on this. In the end, it all gets tossed into the "too much trouble to bother with" file.
1. You will not have trademark protection unless A) you register the mark with the US Trademark Office (lengthy process + costs), or B) use it in commerce and rely on common law trademark. Both are expensive to properly maintain , and both require a $400+/hour attorney to litigate, if it comes to that. I've never met an IP attorney willing to work on contingency. They all ask for money up front.
2. You can copyright a unique depiction of your character and register it. Registration is not required to enjoy basic copyright protection, but without registration you can't sue for damages, and it's not worthwhile to file a claim that costs $100K in court only for only actual loss.
3. You cannot claim exclusive copyright on preset morphs applied. These are algorithmic alterations, and copyright does not recognize them. Copyright is for the human creative element. You would need to manually alter the base mesh in a wholly creative and unique way to claim exclusivity..
4. The way you protect your work is to register each panel or drawing (the copyright office allows for compilations, if they are filed within a reason period of time after publication), clearly mark the copyright ownership on the work, and concentrate on the text and rendered art.
5. Thomas is correct that when you purchase a model like Aiko 6 you merely have a non-exclusive license to render 2D art with those assets. You can claim a derivitive copyright, but you cannot claim any type of exclusivity. For that, to hold up in court you'd be best off with a new wholly new character made by you, or commissioned by you and provided under exclusivity rights.
The above is not legal advice.
You should consider characters such as TinTin, Ben 10, Richie Rich, Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes), Charlie Brown, Jack (Jack the Lad of the old folk Jack Tales), Max (Max & the Magic Marker), Tom (Tom Thumb), and I'm sure you could go on, are all stylistic varients of the same archetype character.
So if you take a base model and alter in a way that doesn't use purchased assets or purchased geometries or purchased texture sets and so on but does use a subset of them then the unique character you have created will be legally copyrighted - not just the displayed works of art that character is in. Of course as the most identifiable feature it is the face were you should put most if not almost all of your efforts at originality. Basically then, you've created your own unique IP. Given the money that Disney and many other companies make decades after their original IP was created, it'd be silly in my mind to publish games or books or whatnot that has character models in it and not make any effort whatsoever to create unique IP via those models.
Will that make you Disney rich or even well off? Well, truthfully, not likely, but it's a sure bet you'll not even have the chance if you don't make the effort and since you are presumably interested in creating interesting stories and good characters then why wouldn't you make the effort?
LOL, however that basic business and artistic fact is no reason for you though to tell anybody that is what you are doing unless you want a string of people scoffing at your goals.
Copyright is automatic. Trademark is easy and if you find you have a bonified success on your hands then you may file for trademark after that success. Truth be told until and if you have success trademark will be a waste of money as no one will have interest in copying your flop. However, at the 1st sign of good success register that trademark fast - it's cheap then but other will then have interest in it. Registering trademarks are not cheap enough to waste money for a string of flops.
If you needed to for any unique human characters you could always easily replace any DAZ meshes with MakeHuman meshes and copy edit over the portions of what make your characters unique to the MakeHuman meshes leaving the DAZ meshes behind.
Well, it probably wouldnt get that famous anyway (XD). But like i said before, i acknowledge the fact others could create an exact looking character and call it (dont wanna assume genders) their own. I have no intention of making it exclusively mine. I just wanted to know if ill have the rights to say "this character of mine looks this way" and then show the morphed aiko that i will have. I want to know if i can use that appearance of other purposes such as animation movies using different softwares (i wont use the mesh from Daz for animation, ill recreate it). The model would look fairly different from Aiko.
As was said, the morphed Aiko has to be using a 3rd parties' work that exclusively belongs to you to be able to protect it. Now you can create an exclusive texture set for clothing with your own style and logos and that expression would be yours. Apple for example could certainly use Aiko 6 and add unique textures with Aiko 6 and morphs dialed in and say this is Sheena but the only thing that would be protected are the unique textures, say with the famous Apple Logo. The morphs dialed in would not. So you would need to create new unique morphs and keep them for your professional use only to be able to legally protect the Aiko 6 morph character you are talking about. If you became successful others will try to copy and will copy but exact expression of the unique character you create is protected legally because you used unique elements that you created or had privately created for that character.
So if was an exact copy of your bespoke work you could truthfully legally hold them liable in such a case. You aren't DAZ 3D licensing the work for directive works after all. For that there is no doubt.
So really you if make your IP that you enjoy and to both protect yourself legally and to have your own IP you basically have no choice but to make it unique depending on what your product is. And then if it is successful then you quickly file trademarks on all the relevant words, logos, characters, environments, and so on - whatever it is that is unique and making the product successful.
Don't be fooled by large contributions of your characters look coming from 3rd party vendors. Your copyright claims are unique to your Aiko 6 private bespoke derivatives. DAZ 3D can not lay claim to your character's 'bespoke morphs', 'bespoke clothing' that you created with ''bespoke logo' even though it uses Aiko 6 as the base. Likewise you cannot claim Aiko 6 as a character you hold IP for as in the DAZ Store. That's like selling typing paper and telling the author the maker of the typing paper can claim copyright and profits from the author's story sales. No they can't, not beyond increased sales of typing paper from that author's success. If you create a work of art that results in huge popularity for Aiko 6 with no bespoke alterations you essentially put DAZ 3D in the position of owning the IP to Mickey Mouse but not the rights to 'Steamboat Willie'. That sort of thing is done all the time via IP licensing deals and is an accurate representation of what you using Aiko 6 with no bespoke alterations are doing. You may do that, it's really up to you but then DAZ 3D holds the IP of the exact Aiko 6 look. Since it's the story or the game play simply calling Aiko 6 Sandy is enough to create your own unique IP since it's Sandy that is associated with the story and not Aiko 6. In this case you have no way to stop others from exactly copying the look but that look isn't really the crucial part here. The story is. The characters are. The game play is. The look isn't but does help with advertising by creating easily recognizable characters different from others in some easy way, as little as a unique logo with an expected color scheme. You can even call in your story the character Aiko. It's the story that is important. Actors replace other actors all the time. How many actresses have played Miss Marple? If desired, you'd just need to with your earnings hire a professional to create an new Aiko for you (and hope that the old DAZ Aiko look was not a big factor in your success
).
Bottom line is it really doesn't matter how good your art is or the style it is in if it is passably professional or passably comic either the story or the game play will get sales or it won't. If it gets very good sales then you worry about trademark.
DAZ 3D and others do successful takedown notices all the time when their rights are violated. You should make a bit of effort to protect your work, whether as a hobby or professionally, but you needed spend a lot of money or time to to do that. Do what's needed to stay legal, if and when it's needed to stay legal.
So basically what i got from that is as long i make unique clothe textures and skin textures (or something unique) with enough morphs to seperate her from the look of Aiko, no one should be able to give me any takedown notices. And like i said, if others do something similar to my character, thats fine. I really dont mind. And yes, i would hire a professional to get the characters on my own when i have some more money. Thats the thing. I am within my legal rights to do that right?
Let's make this simpler.
You have 100% rights to your RENDERS. DAZ or other artists will not "strike you down" for making RENDERS.
So if you make a comic - nobody will have any problems.
Oh yes, for sure that's within your legal rights but you shouldn't announce others may copy your work, for example, a unique set of logo clothing as school uniforms or such as such an announcement negates your legal rights. As a person or small business, you may wisely choose not to spend your time looking for copiers or such but that just economic and time management sense. It doesn't mean you permit the copying or loose your rights for not spending your resources looking for copiers.
Depending on your goals for the characters, be really sure about the conditions you allow copying your characters unique traits - for example it was at once time common to mod the Wolfenstein 3D and Doom levels to be new and unique by people that had not legal rights to do so. However we can be sure Wolf 3D and Doom were heavily trademarked and protected as id Software property. In another words don't anound that the unique parts of your characters can be copied except for use in mods for your game or story or whatnot - depending on what your goal is.
If you are making like a character which which to create a community of modders designing clothing and stories around your characters well it makes sense to allow modding but I'm dubious if you'd get to keep 3rd party mods as your own unless you bought them. You would be able to prevent them from using your character's uniqueness in their games or whatever if you trademarked that uniqueness.
Ahh thanks everyone, I think i got it :)
I just want to be sure that I can use my characters in future animation clips for which I wont be using Daz 3d. I would recreate them in an animation oriented program. Yes they would have several "trademarks" for them. Now If I do the recreation thing. I just wanted to make sure I wont be in trouble from daz or anyone.
The answers that Richard gave you were really the best for the purpose you have in mind.
so in short.. Yes i am free to use it for animations? I mean I could just as easily say that I made this character inspired from aiko right.. Since that is essentially what I would be doing when I start from scratch in a different program.. Haha this is such a dilemma for me
As long as it is 2D data - still renders or animations - then there is no problem, you don't even have to say what you used to create the models (at least as far as Daz is concerned - some publishers may require source listings to ensure you have the proper licenses).
thank you Richard. That has been the straightest answer. Yes I have no intention of sharing 3d data in any way. It will only be used in art(still and moving) including drawings based on it.
Same laws apply whether you are creating 2D or 3D animations, games (yes they are 2D games too), books, or so on with regards to copyright and trademarks. Games and 3D aren't some special case with regards to those copyright and trademark laws. Restriction of sharing of the actual mesh data and textures doesn't enter into those laws that is a requirement DAZ 3D sets forth in their licensing of their models to 3rd parties and that is within their rights but it doesn't effect your rights under the copyright and trademark laws - a competant modeler can easily create a 3D model from 2D images of your animations.
Yea but it isnt a problem to me right?
You're over-thinking this. You could render Aiko and her clothes stock, with no changes, and your 2D render is still copyrightable, but not necessarily protectable. You have no exclusive rights to the character or clothes depicted, but a derivative copyright is nevertheless conveyed to you. The amount your scene is unique produces the level of protection you could enjoy. A naked Aiko in a T-pose is not protectable at all, even with your derivative copyright, as it lacks the basis of creative merit.
Anyone can send you a takedown notice for anything, even against something you created from scratch. However, such a notice would be easily countered, even for a stock render, with a showing of how your render was produced. The more your character and *scenes* deviate from stock, the stronger your copyright position, but you and everyone else on the planet already have a non-exclusive license to produce derivative works.
IMO, this is the correct information for your query. I think there has been other information given that is confusing the issue.
Yes, but all the other answers have certainly offered good advice.