Copyright on posters (Satire / Parody)

[Reorte]

3 minutes ago, wombatofludham said:

In the past when doing scenery for Microsoft Train Simulator 1 I avoided the need to get permission for brand advertising by inventing brands, like "Svensk" in a blue and yellow oval as a "pastiche" of Ikea, "Liffey" in place of "Guinness" and "Emerald Oil" for the petrol stations.  I got away with it.

 

In a very similar vein there's a Fort William - Mallaig route for Train Simulator, with the shops "Mollysons" and "Angus" in Fort William, in a style that for some reason appears familiar... I think there are one or two others I've forgotten there too.

 

Considering the location "Angus" particularly amused me.

[melmerby]

42 minutes ago, wombatofludham said:

"Liffey" in place of "Guinness"

I thought Guinness was the Liffey😄

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, Reorte said:

My understanding is that you'll be breaking copyright if the hoarding is the subject of your photo, but not if it just happens to be in the background.

I posted a You Tube video (private mode) of one of my trains running and I got the PRS after me for copyright fees (unless I removed the audio) because there was a radio playing in the background which I hadn't even noticed.

They even atold me what piece of music it was! (I suppose they had to as it could've have been someone playing live.)

Most of the time the noise of the train on the track was louder.

 

However I didn't get any hassle from a video of a Midland Metro Tram near Birmingham Town Hall where a local radio station was blaring out from a stall at the German Market and was the loudest thing on the track.

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, wombatofludham said:

In the past when doing scenery for Microsoft Train Simulator 1 I avoided the need to get permission for brand advertising by inventing brands, like "Svensk" in a blue and yellow oval as a "pastiche" of Ikea, "Liffey" in place of "Guinness" and "Emerald Oil" for the petrol stations.  I got away with it.  Also, as I wanted "Wednesford" to represent 1968-1992 I couldn't use any reproduction advert hoardings as they would date horribly, so again for any permanent advert hoardings I invented local advertising, for the kind of local businesses who would take out a 48 sheet advert like the "Knight Inn, Wednesford's Premier Night Out" and "Len Langlands, Designer furniture store" (a pastiche of "Lee Longlands" whose irritating advert jingle used to be a staple of ATV in the late 70s).  As I enjoy graphic design and having a laugh it was fun and allowed me to design time neutral advertising although Wednesford typographically entered the 1970s around 1968 and stayed there for the next thirty years!

So one way around it might be to design your own posters that suggest a brand but do so in a gentle, non-defamatory way.

If you ever see the former Jubilee Line platforms and escalators at Charing Cross station in a film - and it has been in many - you will see adverts on the walls.  All of these are for fictional products, films, theatre productions; as well as avoiding having to negotiate with real companies who may or may not want to be associated with a film, they are less likely to appear out of date (too early or late) compared to real adverts.

[wombatofludham]

Just a few examples of neutral adverts from "Wednesford". It's not too difficult to do and you can buy inkjet-compatible sheet plastic normally used for badge making which accepts ink well, can be printed to scale, and if sprayed with inkjet-photo varnish should be damp, scratch and fade proof.

 

My friend who built my baseboards was a retired builder called Evans, so I put this up as an in-joke.  

 

 

A crossover from "Pendeford Yard" and the Cock Marling sherry and cider brewer.  Cock Marling is a village in Sussex.

The 70s came and stayed in Wednesford.

The images were all open source, and the designs were done in Corel Paint Shop Pro

[Michael Hodgson]

12 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

EasyGroup, the owners of easyJet, do not "own" the word "easy", but they have trademarked various brands with "easy" in them, including "easyLife

 

Easy Virtue ?

[Michael Hodgson]

The LNER didn't seem to have any copyright trouble using parody on its posters ...

 

[Dagworth]

3 hours ago, wombatofludham said:

 

Genuine advert from a gig venue in New York this summer (my photo)

[kevinlms]

6 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

The LNER didn't seem to have any copyright trouble using parody on its posters ...

 

A classic parody, so nothing to complain about. 

Or anything you can do, we can do better!

[Enterprisingwestern]

5 hours ago, kevinlms said:

A classic parody, so nothing to complain about. 

Or anything you can do, we can do better!

 

Mixing Z gauge and O gauge doesn't work though!

 

Mike.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

15 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

The LNER didn't seem to have any copyright trouble using parody on its posters ...

 

 

I might well be mistaken, but everywhere I've seen has a 1936 date for the "summer comes soonest in the south" poster, whereas the LNER one appeared in 1932. However, the Southern had been using the image since at least 1925. Here's one version:

 

The image was used with other text, and Alamy have a partially colourised version here: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-south-for-sunshine-british-southern-railway-poster-about-1925-33696931.html

 

Perhaps the "summer comes soonest in the south" version was a pastiche of the LNER poster.

[Michael Hodgson]

Plagiarising a competitor's ads would have widely been seen as "not cricket", ungentlemanly behaviour rather than a breach of copyright at the time.  But there would not have been any real problem with the LNER using the SR ideas, because the two could hardly be seen as in direct competition with each other.  The "with apologies" confirms the parody, and in any case the two ads are not so much poaching but effectively promoting a common message - take a long train journey for your holidays.

[Cwmtwrch]

The SR and LNER posters used very similar ideas, and one may have been inspired [rather than parodied] by the other, but ideas can't be copyrighted, only the implementation of them. There is no breach of copyright by either company as the two images are quite different.

[melmerby]

Back to Easy Group and their "owning" the EasyLife name.

 

Maybe this company might hsve other ideas:

It's a British company.

Edited October 12, 2023 by melmerby

[MartinRS]

On 08/10/2023 at 19:40, Bernard Lamb said:

If the hoarding is visible from a public place, then you are at liberty to take a photograh of it. You own the copyright of that photograph. As far as I can see what you do with it is up to you.

I'm not sure about that. Photographs such as the type you describe have certainly been removed from Wikimedia Commons. If you are just using the spoof advertising on a model railway and not posting pictures online I can't see you having a problem.

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Copyright might be a good place to look for general advice, though be aware that international issues are accounted for there.

 

[MartinRS]

23 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

Mixing Z gauge and O gauge doesn't work though!

So you don't have any plans to model the Hove Park Miniature Railway and the Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway?
 

[Enterprisingwestern]

Just now, MartinRS said:

So you don't have any plans to model the Hove Park Miniature Railway and the Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway?
 

 

Not currently, but never say never!

 

Mike.

[Michael Hodgson]

 

 

52 minutes ago, MartinRS said:

So you don't have any plans to model the Hove Park Miniature Railway and the Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Railway?
 

 

You'll need an unorthodox form of baseboard construction ...

 

 

Or of course you could model Dawlish

 

 

 

[ejstubbs]

10 hours ago, melmerby said:

Back to Easy Group and their "owning" the EasyLife name.

 

I used to work for a multinational computer company called Tandem Computers.  The UK CEO once received a "cease and desist" letter from a representative of the Tandem shoe shop chain.  They were swiftly advised to get lost.

 

AIUI (though IANAL) you can only trademark a term for a defined use, or range of uses (which can nonetheless be quite wide), and the primary cause for complaint by the trademark holder would be if there was a potential for confusion of the businesses, either intentionally or by accident, or damage to the reputation of the trademark holder e.g. "borrowing" the name, or a clear reference to the name, for a wholly unrelated business of questionable legality/ethics.

 

In the case of Tandem, it was pointed out that anyone confusing the computer company with the shoe shop would quickly realise their error, or have it politely corrected for them.

 

I suspect that the band Easy Life could have had a good chance of defending their case in court, but absolutely couldn't have afforded to do so, and EasyGroup Ltd knew that.  So not dissimilar to a SLAPP in some ways: a large corporation bearing down on a largely innocent third party pretty much just because they could.  I suppose it's possible that they may have felt that the content of some of the band's songs was not something they would want people to associate with their insurance products.  Conversely, the band may have decided, on having the potential for confusion pointed out to them, that they didn't want people mistakenly to associate them with insurance salesmen (a sentiment I can sympathise with).

[billbedford]

On 11/10/2023 at 10:44, PhilH said:

Which leads to the thorny question of how long does copyright last for? People make huge assumptions about this, but, as with everything nothing last forever. Part of this also is who actually owns the copyright. Just because you buy something does not necessarily give you the copyright as far as I can make out copyright belongs to originators not custodians.

 

 

For commercial works, eg posters, 70 years after first publication. For works with a named author, 70 years after the death of the author. 

[beast66606]

Many years ago a forum member was threatened with legal action by a South Wales oil (iirc) company for using their trademarked images - can't remember if he contacted them asking for permission and they were a*sey at that point or if they discovered it and were then a*sey. The bottom line is they had a lot more money to duke it out in court so I'd be wary of taking advice from armchairs - you may well be in the right, but being in the right isn't always free to prove.

 

Conversely when we had the Ginsters liveried 158 running on Widnes I contacted Ginsters who were more than happy to allow us to use the livery and I even sent them a picture of it which they enjoyed almost as much as I used to enjoy their pasties. (cut out most pasties / pies etc these days)

[PhilH]

1 minute ago, billbedford said:

 

For commercial works, eg posters, 70 years after first publication. For works with a named author, 70 years after the death of the author. 

To add to that I believe it's 50 years for technical/ engineering drawings

[billbedford]

9 minutes ago, PhilH said:

To add to that I believe it's 50 years for technical/ engineering drawings

 

The problem with those drawings is that, in general, they don't get published, i.e. made available to the public. If they are archived and acquired by a museum or similar body, a different set of rules apply. 

[PhilH]

22 minutes ago, billbedford said:

 

The problem with those drawings is that, in general, they don't get published, i.e. made available to the public. If they are archived and acquired by a museum or similar body, a different set of rules apply. 

The real problem is that these rules are not set in stone, open to interpretation and open to challenge.

It would appear that museums etc sometimes claim copyright on things they have no right to.... depending on which learned tome you read.

[Cwmtwrch]

3 hours ago, PhilH said:

The real problem is that these rules are not set in stone, open to interpretation and open to challenge.

If you are not familiar with the concept of copyright it is easy to misunderstand how it applies, as it is a complex subject, and some people and organisations are not as aware as perhaps they should be. In general, legal rules are set out in the statute(s) that Parliament has created, setting out the law as they intend it to be. However, the drafters of statutes make mistakes sometimes, or leave [unintentional] loopholes, or sometimes circumstances just change in unexpected ways. Then the courts have to try and sort things out by interpreting the statute law in the light of the case before them; any precedent so created can then be overruled or modified by a superior court, but is otherwise binding.