This is counter to my prior understanding of the issue, which was that the specific diagram was copyrightable, but the folds were not, so any person willing to document the model in a different way could freely publish it.Joseph Wu wrote:The current popular interpretation of copyright law amongst leading designers is that designs are copyrightable. This means very little since it has not been tested in court. Without that test, there is no legal precedent, and the interpretation is really just a matter of opinion. However, this interpretation has had enough weight to cause out-of-court settlements in such cases. So, from that point of view, distributing your own diagrams would require permission of the copyright holder. Of course, once such permission is given, the diagrammer would hold the copyright on the diagrams.
I had assumed that was how Alexandra Dirk published models (mainly boxes) through Sterling Publishing that are identical to Tomoko Fuse's boxes but are diagrammed with photographs instead of line drawings. Unless some of these out of court settlements are about that and I'm just not aware of them. Can you specify more about these cases?
