artwork and copyright question

costafonix

Does anyone out there know how the copyright laws work w.r.t. reproducing artwork on a guitar? e.g If I wanted to paint a pic of Hendrix or cartoon characters like The Simpsons, would that be breaking any copyright laws?

singemonkey

For sale? I'm guessing yes. But if they're in small enough numbers - like a single guitar to one person, you'll probably get away with it. It's hardly worth their while instituting legal proceedings for that.

But no, you can't produce a line of guitars with Micky Mouse on them without getting a knock at the door.

For your own guitar, no one cares.

AlanRatcliffe

Strictly speaking, yes - it's breaking copyright. As SM said, it's difficult to police, so they usually leave the small fry be. The one exception is if you try and sell on the bigger sites like Ebay or Gumtree - many of the bigger companies (Disney, etc.) police pretty vigorously and will have ads removed.

infernox

Dude if your using it for yourself then no one can do anything to you.

If you take the artwork and change it by 10-20% or draw it from scratch yourself then you may use it. Im a designer and believe me, no one, specially in SA gives a crap. We have companies who use existing logo's and graphics for their corporate identities...

Draw/Design anything yourself with proof of creation date and original file and you can use it for anything.

IceCreamMan

CostaFonix wrote Does anyone out there know how the copyright laws work w.r.t. reproducing artwork on a guitar? e.g If I wanted to paint a pic of Hendrix or cartoon characters like The Simpsons, would that be breaking any copyright laws?

you would be breaking law strictly speaking but no one going to enforce that one ....

costafonix

Thanks for all the comments, yep I've been wanting to do this project for a while now, and it would be a strictly once-off, non-profit, not for resale initiative. Only issue would be if I used this guitar to gig with,,, would the men-in-black bust me??? D'oh!!!! :-\

infernox

No... you can gig with it.

costafonix

fantastic,,,, cool, 8) lemme go find them paintbrushes,,,