Many people think if you make a 10% change to an item it gets round copyright rules, but it's a very incorrect assumption.
It falls under 'derivative work' and only the copyright holder has a right to make changes and get the benefit of them.
Usually it's either they started from scratch and didn't quite replicate it exactly, or they have used a copy to start from.
Even starting from scratch violates copyright, as the design itself is protected (though often under slightly different rules and laws to some degree)
I've had it happen on occasion, where I've reproduced an 18th C design of button or badge. The design itself isn't within copyright, but the actual work I make is copyrighted. So anybody can make another version to the design without problem, but they can't directly (ie take a mould) copy my own work itself.
Occasionally I've been asked by a regiment or military tailor to supply badges or buttons as they were unavailable via the MOD or the major manufacturers in small quantities. It can be difficult explaining to either, that you can't make legal modern reproduction of a regiment's own designs and badges without paying and getting permission from the MOD directly first, yet you can buy a fake repro off Ebay with impunity
|