International Law

Figurine Bible Dispute

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

Someone uses Playmobil figurines to create Bible scenes (see IPKat here). The maker does not like that, his lawyer calls it a copyright violation.

If the figurine is a work protected under copyright, people are not allowed to use it without permission to create larger works, like a Bible scene. If it is only a building block, then the only work in question is the resulting scene.

It might be open to question if the act of building a simple doll figurine qualifies for copyright protection. If so, every maker would probably risk violating the copyright of countless other doll makers who were in the market a couple of years earlier.

But if copyright protects this kind of thing, then there might be a market for a figurine created newly from scratch expressly giving buyers the license to use it as a building block for their own creations.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on April 10, 2009 (boomark / email).