Selling Origami

[phillipcurl]

makes sense.

[kareshi]

The impression I got from reading Origami USA's copyright law rundown was that you can sell someone else's design if you're sure NOT to credit them... something like, don't use the author's name for your own gain?

Anyway, the general consensus is don't sell somebody else's stuff without asking the designer first. After that, I guess you would credit them.

I haven't put out much origami for selling, but if I did, I'd weight the material cost and the time spent. Figure out your own hourly rate and price it accordingly.

[gab]

I have a question that I think fits in here. Is it legal to sell an original design, if the design is a representation of a copyrighted figure? For example, could I sell origami based on a movie? A lot of times I see, in books and collections, a model that clearly represents something from pop culture, but isn't labeled as such. For example, something that is clearly a Star Wars ship, but the model is just titled "spaceship." That makes me think that it's risky to specifically attempt to make a profit from an original design of a copyrighted subject.

[deadbard]

Well, I think you can safely hang onto technicality under that aspect, like a different name for a model or something, I mean, Kamiya's book got in it a model depicting Bahamut and a Chocobo which, I think, are both copyrighted by Square, but by giving them a different name from the original ones (respectively Divine Dragon and Yellow Bird) he saved himself the troubles of a lawsuit for copyright infringment or something.

That's just my opinion tho.

[Baltorigamist]

I think I heard that's the reason Brian Chan's book is taking so long--because he needed to get the rights to publish Wall-E.

It's also the motivation behind some of my own names for my models (Rolling Droid = Droideka, Little Pegasus = MLP). I plan to publish the diagrams for both of those in the future.

[bethnor]

there is some haziness here. squarenix has a copyright on that particular design of bahamut. but the actual name is a mythological character on whom no one can have a copyright.

[ahudson]

I have a question that I think fits in here. Is it legal to sell an original design, if the design is a representation of a copyrighted figure?

I seem to remember somebody actually got a cease-and-desist letter over an origami Batman design they'd done. And toys of trademarked characters always seem to have a notice that permission was given. So the answer is probably no.

[chris_t]

I read that as "crease-and-desist" initially!