QUESTION
Can a mold producer claim a copyright on the casts made by those molds and prevent someone from selling the cast.
Asked on Mar 19th, 2013 on Intellectual Property - Texas
More details to this question:
I bought some molds from a person that produces molds for plaster casting. The molds are not of any famous or tradmarked characters or items (Donals Duck etc...). I was going to sell the plaster casts I made from the molds as premade kits that people could paint. In addition, the molds make small bricks that can be built up into larger structures and I was going to sell predone larger structers. The producer of the molds says I cannot do that and due to copyright I cannot sell any plaster casts made from the molds or any structures I make using the plaster casts from the molds. Is he correct?
1 ANSWER
The answer to your inquiry does not relate to the mold, but rather to the resulting product. Is the resulting product a utilitarian product? If so, is there a design patent or utility patent covering the product? If not, there may not be any enforcible rights. Is the object decorative, as opposed to functional, e.g., a sculpture? If so, who desighed the object? If you did, the copyright in the object belongs to you, not the person who made the molds. As you can see, there are numerous questions that must be answered before an opinion can be given as to what you can do. However, mere ownership of the molds would not give ownership of the rights in the resulting cast the same way that ownerhip of a blueprint of a building would not give rights in a building constructed using the blueprint.
Answered on Mar 20th, 2013 at 5:07 PM