Question on IP

gohkm

Active member
I've got a couple of rare figs from a now-defunct company. Somebody suggested that I make moulds of these figs, and cast them either in metal or resin. This sounds awfully like IP infringement to me - is this correct? Even though the original firm no longer exists, their publishing arm still does, and doesn't this imply that the IP rights are still held by the publishing arm?

Anybody know anything about this?
 
If the company went out of business, it's likely two things happened:

1) Sometimes, companies sell of their copyrights to satisfy bankruptcy judgments, or in the course of liquidation. It's possible that they sold the rights to these models to someone.

2) It's also possible that they simply transferred their rights over to the publishing company, if it's ostensibly the same one.

Without knowing more, I'd advise against it, though you could of course chance it on the grounds that nobody might care enough to press any sort of charges.
 

evil tendencies

Cake or Death?
I wouldn't do it, especially if you're looking to follow the law. If a corporation owned them and then went out of business, the rights don't just go away - the publishing rights belong to someone. By making molds of those old sculpts, you are infringing on someone's rights, and though the new owner may not choose to excercise those rights, they still have the say on whether the sculpt can be published again or not.

Ral Partha is a great example of this. After Ral Partha was sold to FASA in 1998, FASA had the rights to all of the Partha lines, but only kept Shadowrun stuff in production, and even that in limited numbers. The fantasy stuff was considered lost by many people. When FASA was, in turn, bought by Wizards of the Coast in 2000, Wizards decided to put some of the original Partha sculpts back into production through their new subsidiary Iron Wind Metals. This was possible because those old OOP figures were still owned, and eventually put back into production when the money was right.

Here's something to consider as well when making your decision: IWM only started off producing a very limited number of classic best-sellers, to see if there was a market. There was, and now most of the old Partha stuff is available again, including many of the Shadowrun sculpts that I personally love. If many folks had written Partha off and made their own copies, there would have been no financial incentive to put those figures back into production, and it would actually have made it harder for us to get access to the whole range again.

Sorry for the long post, but this is something that's near to my heart.
 

gohkm

Active member
Thanks, guys. I didn't think it was legal, in the first place. It's very tempting, since this particular set of figs happens to be very popular, albeit rare. I reckon I ain't touching this with a 10 foot pole now. Cheers!
 

mickc22

Granddad!
Why don't you e-mail the publishing arm and see if they can help with who now has the rights to these minis
can't hurt can it?
 
Back To Top
Top