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How are they getting away the star trek, bsg, and star wars outfits?
They don't actually say the name, battlestar galactica, star trek, or star wars, so I'm wondering if its only partly licensed, like they have the permission to use the likeness, but they can't actually say the names of the franchises or something?
I welcome it if they are. But if not then they are starting to become legally dubious the way renderhub is.
If they are licensing, I'd love to see Aliens or Terminator next. Or TOS star trek and bsg.
Daz is pretty careful when it comes to copyright infringement and I doubt they have any agreements with big studio franchises. Therefore there's no specific names and the products are just generic enough to avoid litigation. Turbosquid have tons of branded products with copywrited names on them and don't seem to have any infringement problems though.... Coca Cola, McDonalds, Jack Daniels, you name it. I don't know how they get away with it.
I remember them having to remove outfits in the past though. It was some superhero suit. I think it was either Harley quin or Deadpool.
If they had made a licensing deal, you can be SURE they would be posting that news all over the place. They'd be allowed to use the real names (and they sure as hell WOULD use them, they'd be stupid not to). It would be a big deal to them to be able to do that. They would be able to get a ton of new users who never even heard of DAZ before, just from the new deal. Curious fans of those franchises would see what its all about. Search engines would have daz websites show up with those franchise names, etc.. It would be a big deal for them.
So if they made a deal and are keeping silent about it, it would be totally stupid and so its highly unlikely. Anythings possible of course, but if I had to guess, id say "no way in hell has it happened"
Maybe they did? Because on the daz news letter it did mention battlestar galactica and star wars by name, but not on the site.
Maybe they just talked to their lawyers about it or something. But I'm pretty confused by it.
One thing though, i'm actually surprised they haven't done steamboat mickey and minnie character morphs yet.
>Therefore there's no specific names and the products are just generic enough to avoid litigation
Except for the addons. They could get away with it if they made the addon textures free the way vanishing point does, but those addons are perfect recreations of star trek uniforms.
A usual requirement would be if they had TM symbols by the names and in footnotes specifying the owners of the trademarks. Did this appear in the newsletter when they mentioned the names? Its a standard requirement partners do with trademarked properties.
Public domain Steamboat Mickey isn't something that could be applied to any Genesis characters while staying within copyright. Legally it doesn't matter if items are free or paid @Hamburgler. The original images are 2D so probably not transferable as a 3D model. As @Gts6 says, if Daz had made a licensing deal they'd be screaming it from the hilltops and not hiding it under a bushel.
I respectfully don't think that would matter. There are a ton of "steamboat willie" games being made right now that are 3d and Disney can't go after them. If the design is the same as the steamboat version and not any later versions it should be fine, especially if they keep it black and white.
>A usual requirement would be if they had TM
I couldn't find any, but the page for the daybreak outfit says "inspired by the popular battlestar galactica series"
You're probably right @Hamburgler and any decision will be fought by lawyers at 20 paces, then appealed, then re-appealed into the next decade long after I'm dead, regardless of the merits of either case. If they're going down the "inspired by" path I would judge that as pretty safe. A bit Milli Vanilli but legally sound.
Ripped from a forum:
Some of them probably are breaking copyright law, to be 100 percent honest. Having said that, if you are generic enough you can do certain things without being in violation. For instance ‘Tatooine’ is probably protected, as it is a word invented by a copyrighted work. ‘May the Force be with you’ might also be copyrighted. But ‘a desert planet’ is not copyrighted, and ‘no. there is another’ is probably not copyrighted, even though putting those two together with a leia-like princess would get people to think of star wars.
lightsaber is probably copyrighted… ‘man holding a laser sword’ is probably not, etc. It is permissible to create things similar to a copyrighted work as long as you don’t try to pass it off as licensed merchandise or make an exact replica. For example, depictions of Darth Vader are incredibly recognizable and could probably be cease-and-desisted by Disney lawyers if they caught an Etsy user selling them.
I guess it would depend on how far one side is willing to press the subject or cave in.
Yeah it seems like they are riding the line then. Good thing I back all of this stuff up in case they remove it, and I can't actually buy it anymore which I try to if I can.
All the sites break trademark... all of them.
If I remember right (15 years ago) DAZ' official policy was that they won't offer trademark-violating assets for their in-house stuff, but say something like 'vendors must do their own due diligence and licensing'. They'll host a trademark violating thing for as long as it will sell, but will honor any legit DMCA requests from the trademark owner or the owner's legit designee (read: law firm). DMCA Safe Harbor provisions keep DAZ from being sued directly in these cases, and they keep their half of the proceeds regardless.
The others are also the same, if memory serves. The onus and risk are both on the vendor, but the sites profit regardless.
From the looks of it, Renderhub seems(!) to have taken some sort of proactive action, at least as evidenced by vendors like 3DUK and such quickly changing descriptions of products and product names from the games and such that they wrapped and ripped-off. But they're pretty much the same overall.
The industry, such as it is, has always been a game where only the stores make any real money, high-volume vendors making enough to eke out a living (sort of), and everyone else getting a few bucks here and there.
Wonder if it would turn out profitable if they actually did ever get a licensing agreement. I wonder if the "Official" 3d versions would make it worth the effort.
@Gts6 To protect their brand the trademark owners would insist on things like sale price and quality control that I don't think many sites would like to hand over. So long as you don't become a threat to their bottom line they'll probably just ignore you.
If fact in most cases they may see you as doing them a favor for spreading their brand name, if done sensitively. So a 3D bottle with "Coca Cola" on it could be seen as a positive, a big black dildo with the same logo may not be viewed the same.
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