Who has the rights to hand drawn images?

Question

this is an example, I have drawn an image of a popular video game hero. I would like to put the image on a t-shirt and sell them on ebay. Will I run into legal issues if I do this? If so what can I do to avoid them besides not selling the t-shirts. Please base your answer off of the example.

Answer 1

That is a great question! I know of a very famous pilot (Ernst Udet) who used to sketch famous pilots, politicians, and actors etc. on napkins, paper etc. when out to dinner. most people collected them, but some tried to sell them as "sketches of famous people" for profit. He went after them and won, as he signed each sketch (copyrighted it, so to speak). This happened in 1921! I would say, with the ferocity that companies go over people for any " copyright infringement" now, for example, Disney suing a company for having "Mickey" in its name, I would be very careful of any infringement, as if they win, they get ALL the money you may have made, plus court costs etc. Best to contact the Video game Manufacturer and ask "can I do this?" Save you time and possible money.

Good luck

Answer 2

Yes, you will absolutely run into the problem of what is called "likeness rights".  Even if you drew it yourself and it is different from the other character, if it is based off of that character they can file against you if you try to make money off of this without their consent.  If you need an example of this, hmmm check out the movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.  They had something in there about that lol.

Answer 3

Very likely you will get problems. If the character

is copyrighted, which it likely is, redistribution in

*any* form is usually not permitted. So it doesn't

really matter if you get an official image or reproduce

it by hand. You'd in both cases need a license.

Answer 4

The creator of the image has the rights to it.  You drawing the logo/character someone else has copyrighted does not make you the creator.  You can be sued for doing as you plan.  A local day care center owner painted the center walls with Disney characters...and got sued, and is now bankrupt and out of business.  The only thing you can do to be sure you are not hasseled is to not copy the images.  Why risk trouble for a stupid video game character image?  Grow the F up.

Answer 5

TV and movie characters are owned by their creators and any use of them to make money is a violation of the copyright laws. I would think the same would be true of video game heroes.