Hi Quincy. I am in Massachusetts.
Is this something I could copyright? Or would my creations just be covered under transformative use (for the most part) and something like this can't be copyrighted?
Thank you for providing your state name, Jenni81.
Transformative works have copyrights that can be registered with the US Copyright Office. But registration of the copyrighted work is not necessary to have copyrights in the work. The copyrights exist once the new work has been fixed in a tangible (or fixed) form.
What transformative works are, are works that take parts of the copyrighted works of other authors to create entirely new and different works. Determining whether a work you create is transformative and not infringing, however, is often difficult. It is difficult because, if a copyright holder believes their work has been infringed by you, the copyright holder can decide to sue you for infringement. It will then be a court that makes that determination. You want to avoid a lawsuit if at all possible.
There are four main factors that are looked at when deciding whether a use of another's work infringes. These factors are the purpose and character of the new use; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the new use upon the potential market for or value of the original copyrighted work. I can go into more detail on this, if necessary, but the cases I will provide links to later will detail them for you.
Now, if you use recycled book pages from books published prior to 1923, copyright infringement is no longer an issue because the books are in the public domain and can be used by anyone for any purpose. If the books are newer books, and perhaps especially if they are newer
picture books, what shows of the book in the glass globes and how the globes are marketed could potentially be seen as infringing (not only on copyrights but on trademark rights).
I cannot tell you, in other words, if a copyright holder would find your use of their works infringing. All I can tell you from this distance is that the globes you are creating
sound to me as if they would be transformative works and, therefore, not infringing. You will want to have the actual globes, and the copyrighted works you intend to use, personally looked at by an IP attorney in your area of Massachusetts to get a more definitive answer.
Good luck.