Repainting and copyrights

[EagleSkinner 36]

I have searched around these fora at Avsim and found many mixed responses about copyrights, but no really clear cut definitive answer. The background: Many planes don't just have a main sponsor paintscheme (viz the Red Bull planes), they have things like "Aeroshell", "Lycoming", "www - someone or other" and all those other trademarked logos that can be found on many planes. The Question: How thin is the ice we painters tread on, when we repaint a plane seen on airliners.net for instance?Personally I try to make contact with the owners and in at least 8 times out of 10 I get a response which has always been yes so far. In the other cases I simply haven't got a reply (Carlsberg, for instance, and their Christen Eagle). Certainly I research as much as I can when doing my "authentic" paints.But even in fictional repaints, when we painters sometimes add a small badge of sorts, are we infringing the copyright laws if we paste a small "Lycoming" transfer on a cowling? And what about freeware models that we paint - what if the model maker has added logos to his model, are we in the wrong if we publish "his" logos with "our" paints.Do the photographers on airliners.net have to get permission from the airlines and plane holders seen at airshows before they submit their photos?Or are these things in the public domain? And if so, isn't a repaint based on a photo also in the public domain? It is merely an animated reproduction.

[mcwdainow 0]

Theres been the infamous problems with the Peter Max schemes and Disney. But the likelihood of any copyright enforcement on repaints is pretty slim.. you would have thought they'd have bigger fish to fry :)As far as I'm aware photographers on A.net don't need permission to upload their photos.For these companies such as Aeroshell and Lycoming, the only thing we could be doing is providing them with added advertising! I wouldn't worry too much about this area.