Copyright Infringement

[Jhon Crawford]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:pokeball.PNGIn this Wikipedia page says that that form of pokeball is public domain, because it consists entirely of information that is common property and contains no original authorship. It's simple geometry.

I want to know if that's true.

Thank you.

 

[FlyingRon]

Understand there are two issues here. COPYRIGHT is the protection against artistic impression. Yeah, I can draw a Poke Ball and disclaim any rights to my drawing. That's what the declaration on the Wikipedia page is doing. It's not saying that Poke Ball is general is public domain.

The graphical image of the Poke Ball *IS* trademarked by Nintendo and a related company in Japan. I would suspect highly that they have US rights either by registering the mark here or through one of the international agreements (WIPO or the like).

 

[Jhon Crawford]

Understand there are two issues here. COPYRIGHT is the protection against artistic impression. Yeah, I can draw a Poke Ball and disclaim any rights to my drawing. That's what the declaration on the Wikipedia page is doing. It's not saying that Poke Ball is general is public domain.

The graphical image of the Poke Ball *IS* trademarked by Nintendo and a related company in Japan. I would suspect highly that they have US rights either by registering the mark here or through one of the international agreements (WIPO or the like).

Thank you for your response. I think that the question is, to what level of abstraction will the copyright stop being effective? You can see that that's a very simple set of circles and doesn't really represent a sphere.

 

[FlyingRon]

There's no "abstraction" issue. If there is creative process, it's protectable to copyright.

Again, the bigger issue here is more TRADEMARK. You can't go selling Poke Balls, not because you're violating copyright laws but you are marketing a product with someone else's mark.

There are a lot of trademarks that are a whole lot simpler than the Poke Ball. The CBS eye is pretty darned simple, as is the Nike swoosh. Lucent's logo looks like it was left by someone setting their coffee mug down on a napkin (I call it the "brown circle of quality").

 

[quincy]

Jhon Crawford, I actually created a thread for you last night to answer your question. For some reason this thread of yours disappeared.

Here is a link to the thread I created which addresses your question:

https://forum.freeadvice.com/threads/jhon-crawford-copyright-infringement.653637/
I agree with FlyingRon that the Pokeball is protected under trademark laws, which prevents its use by others. But the Pokeball design is not registered with the US Copyright Office and is offered no copyright protection. The design itself has been around for ages.

Again, I provided more information for you in the other thread.

 

[FlyingRon]

Tsk, tsk. Registration is not required to establish copyright. Further copyright of designs is a slightly different thing (Chapter 13) than just general artistic works.

 

[quincy]

Tsk, tsk. Registration is not required to establish copyright. Further copyright of designs is a slightly different thing (Chapter 13) than just general artistic works.

I never said registration was required, so no tsk-tsking, please. I said the Pokeball was not registered. It is also is not eligible for protection under copyright laws because it lacks originality. The design is a very old one.

It can be important to recognize here some of the differences in Japanese and United States copyright laws. In Japan, there is a requirement that a work have creativity comparable to the "novelty" element in our patent laws, not comparable to the "minimum" (more than a phone book) creativity required under U.S. copyright laws.