Origami Creators Sue Artist For Copyright Infringement Concerning Crease Patterns
from the fold-away dept
Wow. Via Joy Garnett, we discover the latest in a long line of ridiculous copyright lawsuits. Apparently six "origami artists" have sued painter Sarah Morris for using their origami patterns as inspiration for some paintings she did. From the exhibits in the lawsuit, you can see the origami folding patterns on the left, and Morris' paintings on the right:
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Filed Under: copyright, origami, paintings, sarah morris
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Can you copyright origami?
http://www.origami-usa.org/files/OrigamiUSA%20Copyright%20Analysis+FAQ.pdf
--However, the document seems to be the opinion of one attorney rather than a consensus.
You can, however, patent some origami, IIRC. I think there is at least one patented paper airplane.
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Re: Can you copyright origami?
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Re: Re: Re: Can you copyright origami?
It would have been smarter--and much more artistically interesting--if the artist had made the origami models, unfolded them, and then painted those sheets of paper. But, I suppose that would have been a lot more work than she intended to do.
Plus, she didn't credit any of the original origami artists? That's just bad 'form'.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Can you copyright origami?
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- The method of playing a game - the actual rules themselves, not how they're written down - can only be protected by patent, not copyright.
- A particular expression of the rules may be copyrightable if it is creative. For example, if you write the rules in very lively, creative prose, rather than drab, functional outlines, your writing may be copyrighted. However, you do not now own THE RULES THEMSELVES, and any other person may write them "in their own words"
The confusion here is that the instructions (rules) are in the form of an image, and we are trained to think images are automatically creative and copyrighted. That is not the case.
The sequence of lines drawn on the paper is purely functional, because if you took "creative" liberties with it, you would have an INCORRECT diagram - just like if you took "creative" liberties with a souffle recipe, it might collapse.
There is limited leeway to express the instructions for a particular design. To the extent that those instructions serve only the function of communicating that information, they are not copyrightable.
For another analogy, this time dealing with images:
If you take a photograph of a painting in the public domain, it may be copyrighted, because your photograph is minimally creative (choice of lighting, posing, etc). However, if you go to great lengths to accurately make a digital scan of the photo which reproduces it faithfully in its original form, then what you're doing is not creative, and the resulting image is in the public domain. This is not theoretical; this is the ruling on an actual case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp.
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There is no order that the folds have to be made. Typically one makes all of the indicated creases and if done correctly the paper will naturally want to collapse into the base. From there it is just a matter of adding details to finish the model. Many of these complex models actually have no sequenced series of folds and can only be formed in this manner.
Lets take the hawk crease pattern above. Someone with a little bit of practice can see that the tail is the bottom left corner, the feet come from the upper left and lower right corner, and the head is the upper right corner. the bulk of the center of the paper gets folded inside the model. I'm not as good with insects but in this case Lang provided clues with the circles. The circles denote that that region of the paper will collapse to form a point. That makes 14 points, probably 6 for legs, 2 for wings, and the rest for the head.
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2/2
Also, if you read the PDF Scote linked, your suggestion is not acceptable according to this group. The declare that to be infringement, too:
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Re: Re: Re: Can you copyright origami?
That being said, while I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Lang and the other artists in the suit, I think the suit itself is ridiculous and what the artists has done is clearly fair use.
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Re: Re: Re: Can you copyright origami?
The crease pattern is actually the only instruction for this model, and believe it or not, origami artist do use the creases as a form of instruction not solely diagrams. It also sounds like nobody here understands the work that goes into designing a model and that his work is his only source of income. He should have made some of the commission here, he did 90% of the work
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Re: Can you copyright origami?
To be clear, you can't copyright the rules for games or the purely procedural instructions for recipes.
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Re: Re: Re: Can you copyright origami?
You can if they're purely procedural.
E.g., If it's along the lines of "Add two tablespoons of pepper" not a problem. If it's "Take a handfull of pepper and BAM!" you have a problem.
At least, that's my understanding of the distinction.
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Re: Can you copyright origami?
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... I've always been led to believe that the key prong in Fair Use is the nature of the derivative work. Mainly, is it commercial or not? These paintings would clearly fall under commercial works since I presume they are for sale.
I think that particular point being the key is needlessly constrictive, seeing as how anything is commercial in the sense that it's an advertisement for yourself as an artist. Unless of course you contributed all your works anonymously.
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It isn't whether something is commercial or not, it is whether it diminishes the market or the original work.
Are any of the origami artists claiming that they were planning on making wall-sized paintings based on their crease patterns?
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My understanding is that the the factors are listed in order of importance. The market impact is the least important factor--which makes sense considering that educational uses should preclude the market effect. I could be wrong, though. It's not like Fair Use really has any teeth.
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the way I see it, the paintings lose on test 1, and win or probably win on all three of the remaining tests, or overall, I would see this as fair use.
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What does that matter? How could we know each individual creator's future plans for their work? Maybe they were planning to turn them into paintings. Can you absolutely say that they weren't planning to do so?
Besides, it's not about money or anything, this is about human decency. If you took someone's designs and built upon them, then by all means the right thing to do is at least acknowledge the people that have helped get you where you are. It's really sad that this happens to Origami artists, because they are constantly building on each other's designs, but they are generally adamant about giving credit.
In fact, I have 3 origami books in front of me right now where at least 70% of the instructions start with the line: "This is a model based on a popular design by..."
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Do you remember every time you learned something? Can you properly credit every thought you've had?
And then, do you know where they learned what they know? Are you crediting them?
And how many of these Origami folks were doing paintings based on paper creasings?
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AC
Credits:
Mrs Brown, 1st grade reading. Mrs. Osborne, librarian ( research) Terry Owen, PC skills, Lestle Elliott, introduced me to Wikipedia. My dad ... sarcasm.
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But to comment on the original post, no, many artists do not give credit for the inspiration of all of their works (nor do they have to).
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On another note, why do you think Sarah Morris tried to hide the origin of the crease patterns when she knew who had created them? And why didn't she ask for permission to use them?
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I would agree with mike and say that she does not need to credit or ask permission as her work is not meant to compete with the original origami artist. She is selling a painting based on the creases, not instructions on creating the origami pieces.
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Re: Re: Patterns
> not need to credit or ask permission as her
> work is not meant to compete with the original
> origami artist. She is selling a painting based
> on the creases, not instructions on creating
> the origami pieces.
But if there's a market for paintings of crease patterns, then the right to exploit that market belongs to the owner of the copyright on the crease patterns, does it not?
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Re: Re: Re: Patterns
2: It's not a painting of crease patterns, it's a painting inspired by / including crease patterns
3: It's a painting not an essay. You don't "credit" your inspirations in a painting.
4: No
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This was a stupid move by an artist who would have most likely been granted free and clear permission to do what she's done. Like I said earlier in this thread, people into origami constantly build upon other people's designs with proper attribution.
Seriously, the whole point of CC and GPL is that the original authors relinquish creative/financial control but demand attribution. I would figure that TD would be all about making sure the original authors get credit. After all, if you're going to let someone build on your work so that you might be able to interest people in more of your original stuff, the crux of the whole endeavor is that attribution must be given.
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CC has various types of licenses, and only some of them demand attribution. GPL is about trying to arm-twist others into creating GPL content. It has nothing to do with attribution. The copyright notice is there for legal purposes of enforcing the license not for attribution.
Demanding attribution for being an inspiration to someone's painting is lame in general. Also, you really take a lot of mystique out of the painting if you explain it's origins. Guessing at, imagining (or determining) Paintings origins and inspirations are supposed to be an excersise for the audience.
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No more than a CC license is. It's saying you're free to use this IF you do such and such. Nobody is twisting your arm to use it in the first place (one's own laziness aside.)
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1) People who create origami structures suing people for artwork based on them
2) people considering colouring in, to be art.
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Yes, so obvious you never thought of it.
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Re: Yes, so obvious you never thought of it.
I'm thinking it's a small group of Origami Otaku. It certainly doesn't pass the 'moron in a hurry' test (Yes, yes. I know.)
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Re: Yes, so obvious you never thought of it.
on the other hand, my personal view is genuinely that while art is difficult to define, people have disappeared up their own rectums confusing the fact that it is possible to define anything as art with meaning that anything not only can be but is art.
And that is before we get to the massive difference between art & design and accurately defining what exactly that difference is.
Colouring in to me, might qualify as design, but would never qualify as art until such time that I see some colouring in that strikes me as being art.
Thankfully, being only in troll mode today, I am happy to be the final arbiter of that for everyone (as everyone else actually is too if they would only admit it).
On the other hand, getting upset that someone is presumably convincing the gullible that their colouring in of your origami fold patterns has created anything remotely like art is foolish.
Going so far as suing is so obviously and utterly banal that it suggests that no person involved in any part of this nonsense is an artist of any kind.
That is, unless, banal is the new chic.
"Pope: Look, the Last Supper is a significant event in the life of our Lord. The Penultimate Supper was not. Even if they had a conjurer and a steel band. Now I commissioned a Last Supper from you, and a Last Supper I want.
Michaelangelo: Yeah, but look...
Pope: With twelve disciples and one Christ.
Michaelangelo: ONE?!?!
Pope: Yes, one! Now will you please tell me what in God's name possessed you to paint this with three Christs in it?
Michaelangelo: It works, mate!
Pope: It does not work!
Michaelangelo: It does, it looks great! The fat one balances the two skinny ones!"
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Re: Re: Yes, so obvious you never thought of it.
Um. What?
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AC is commenting on the fact that people have lost sight of that second part in defining "art" today.
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Uhm....because she didn't need to?
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If this lawsuit is successful,
http://tackad.blogspot.com/2009/08/sewing-pattern-paintings.html
After all, someone might actually make a dress from them and further dilute the sewing pattern making industry to beyond the level of saving. /sarc
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Re: If this lawsuit is successful,
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=&q=bottle+cap+sculpture&um=1&ie=UT F-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1332&bih=1177
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Derivative Works
At the outset, it is an exclusive right of the copyright owner to create and prepare derivative works; it does not matter how transformative. 17 USC 106(2). But, like any exclusive right, it is tempered by a fair use defense. (id. at 107).
The "transformativeness" of a work weighs in favor of a fair use, but is not a defense in and of itself. You would still want to analyze under all four factors.
Moreover, for something to be "transformative," it has to provide some other new social benefit -- think parody, search engines, etc. Simply changing the expression or building upon it does not usually make something a "transformative" use. If anything it is much more like the situations of a photographer taking pictures of a sculpture which is not transformative.
That said, I doubt that there is any copyright in the first instance. The lines on the paper are just about as functional as it gets. They show where to crease the paper. This is a lot like the cases of people trying to get copyrights in printed accounting forms.
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Re: Derivative Works
The pictures of the creases in question aren't instructions, they're a document of what the final form would look like if it was unfolded. I challenge anyone to even tell me what these final shapes should look like based on the crease patterns, which are adorned with no instruction as to order and direction of fold.
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- There are differences between the diagrams and the paintings in many of the exhibits, lines left out, some whole shapes left out (she doesn't like to paint curves?), several shapes painted in one solid color instead of demarcating fold lines, etc. They may not seem substantial, but they are there, those artistic choices.
- No crediting...that's a tricky one. Should she also credit Mondrian or Diebenkorn for incorporating that kind of style of painting/expression? Do those origamists who are suing have sole rights to their diagrams or were they also taking or using or refining designs from others? It says right there in the complaint that origami is an ancient art form practiced throughout the world. Where'd they get their inspiration from?
- Fear of crediting? When these kinds of situations can get litigious at the drop of a hat, it might put rather a large chill on even mentioning you saw someone else's work and were inspired by it.
- Where is the harm? The origamists are allowed to build upon thousands of years of history in their art but she isn't allowed to build upon theirs?
I dunno. I've got an artistic bent myself and am trying to see the complainants' point of view...but I'm having a big problem doing that other than, perhaps, if I were them, kicking myself for not thinking of doing what she did. I wouldn't begrudge her efforts, tho. I think they're quite cool. I'd maybe get in touch with her, let her know that I'd be thrilled if she mentioned my work as inspiration, who knows what it could lead to - joint projects, mutual benefit, wider audience, who can say? I wouldn't waste time or money suing, why do people jump to that? More money than brains? I don't get it.
Also, no matter what you think of it, more art is better. Less is worse. Whose side is copyright on?
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Confusion of types of IP
Whether you can copyright an origami work seems like a tough question. Would you have to get Phu Tran's permission to diagram his rose design? A patent on an origami work might be appropriate, though you can imagine why people wouldn't like that since it costs so much money and time to file and is more short-lived. Perhaps you could apply trade secret protection for creating an origami work, though that would also be limited and would preclude publishing any instructions (and publishing such instructions is the main way to make money through origami). I think with the state of copyright law you could make the case that origami is copyrightable. But the sticking point seems to be the fact that these people publish instructions on how to replicate the works. The courts had argued that you can't copyright recipes because the ingredients and their proportions are facts. Does the same apply to published origami instructions? Would it have copyright protection if no instructions were published? We might imagine similar cases, such as, for example, a magic trick. Does David Copperfield have copyright over the disappearing Statue of Liberty illusion? Does Criss Angel retain copyright over his levitation illusion, though he published instructions on how to replicate it?
From a practical perspective it should be evident that the amount of innovation in origami in the 20th century is immense, just as in the fashion industry and among illusionists, despite (or perhaps because of) weak IP protection.
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Re: Confusion of types of IP
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Re: Confusion of types of IP
Would a painting and coloring in of the full sheet music for a song still in copyright be considered transformative? I think so but I don't think the legality of that is completely cut and dry.
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Why are you losers so eager to defend artists that can't come up with anything original, and so eager to demean and rip off the works of those that do?
Masnick and every one of you seem to desperately want to achieve idiocracy.
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Reading
Though we like to pretend that it comes down to decency, what supersedes this is capital gain. If the [transformative] artwork profits, it would decently be at the behest of the creator, however it is not - I'll beg to notion that the defendant consulted her lawyers prior to tasking the art in question and was told that it would be [transformative] and thus irrelevant for permissive rights.
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Oiy!
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Some thoughts on visual quotes, 'originality', and idea versus expression...
Some thoughts:
- Visual art has ALWAYS utilized quotes: visual referencing. Visual language is composed of such referencing. In that respect, visual art is 'open source". Always has been.
- You can't copyright an arrangement of shapes any more than you can copyright the color blue, or an arrangement of a selection of colors. Legally speaking, such things are usually "not sufficiently 'original'". At any rate, the attempt to make it impossible for another artist to re-use such an arrangement of shapes is not practical, nor is it legally or ethically viable. If such prohibitions were legally enforced (or even enforceable, which they are not), art production would abruptly cease -- a perfectly Kafka-esque scenario. Of course, all the actual artists would go underground, leaving behind an above-ground cultural landscape populated by Disney, CNN, mangy old Associated Press photos, and Hallmark cards. Someone please write a juicy sci-fi thriller along these lines. You can send me my residuals poste restante. :-)
- More on owning compositions: consider a Monet painting of a haystack: a particular geometric shape set against a horizon line, painted with a certain palette. By extension of Allison's logic above, (where she states that Lang's crease patterns were blown up and exhibited as paintings...), if artists were able to copyright compositions -- for that IS what we are talking about here re: crease patterns -- no one else would be allowed to paint the haystack in the same composition or utilizing the same palette. So much for Impressionism (etc), eh?
- Moving right along: Lang's design, which initially was intended as an instructional diagram, is an "idea" and not yet an "expression"; if he himself took the idea and re-purposed it as a painting, then *anyone* can. And why not? These are instructions: instructions are meant to INSTRUCT. They offer a set of procedures to be followed. And procedural instructions are one of the things not protected by copyright... that is because they need to be covered by patent law, which has much stricter rules for inventions and new procedures. Did Lang patent those instructions? something tells me not; nor would he be able to demonstrate that his origami patterns are sufficiently unique or new vis-a-vis traditional origami patterns -- and hence patentable. That they are not.
- Lastly: Sarah Morris appropriated these various arrangements of shapes in order to make her signature paintings; that they comment on the flatness of painting vis-a-vis the ironic use of patterns intended as templates for 3D objects is a conceptual twist that changes the meaning of these patterns considerably. This new meaning adheres to the crease patterns only in her work. They do not change, hinder, impede, supercede, destroy or harm the originating diagrams (or the market for them) in any way. This is one element among many that demonstrates how Morris's use is a transformative use. This also highlights the fact that all artworks have a conceptual dimension, and are not merely about appearances -- people! ---> get past the notion that art is just about "appearance"! the underlying ideas are largely what contribute to the nature, meaning and purpose of any given work.
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Monkey see, monkey do
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For those who may not know, Robert Lang is one of the greatest artists in the field of Origami and he should be compensated for his work. This seems to be far more clear cut than the case Shepard Fairey just settled with the AP for an undisclosed sum.
To anyone that thinks a crease pattern is instructions i would invite them to check his site, grab any crease pattern and recreate one of his works> It can be done, but it only took me 10 years to learn how
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down with 'artists' like this
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bit.ly/ozc8Zf
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Final Verdict?
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Re: Final Verdict?
As soon as the origami artists drew their plans for what would be folded into some kind of object, the drawings were copyrighted. A work is copyrighted as soon as it is placed in "fixed form." (Registration does not give anyone a copyright; their work is copyrighted when it is in fixed form. Registration simply helps to prove you got the idea first and gives you certain extra rights, like collecting statutory damages and attorney fees.)
Morris essentially took a copyrighted work of art and added color to it. That is a derivative work and is copyright infringement if you don't have permission.
In addition, instructions are contain "protected expression" and are therefore, can be copyrighted. "The Copyright Handbook," Stephen Fishman, Attn. Nolo Press Ch. 6 S. 4, "Examples of Works Containing Protected Expression.
Finally, I could find nothing in Nolo that even comes close to permitting this to be fair use. Fulfilling one condition for fair use does not help. All for factors must be considered. Particularly #3, the amount of a work used.
It looks to me like Ms. Morris used very close to 100% of the original work, if not, in fact, 100%.
I am not a lawyer. What I say here is based on material from "The Copyright Handbook" S Fishman Attn. Nolo Press 1994.
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Re: Re: Final Verdict?
Not necessarily. Derivative works can and have been considered Fair Use quite often. If it's Fair Use then no infringement actually occurred and permission is not required whatsoever.
Finally, I could find nothing in Nolo that even comes close to permitting this to be fair use. Fulfilling one condition for fair use does not help. All for factors must be considered. Particularly #3, the amount of a work used.
It looks to me like Ms. Morris used very close to 100% of the original work, if not, in fact, 100%.
That is also not exactly true either. None of the four factors are any more important than the others - it all depends on the individual circumstances of each case. Nor does a Fair Use ruling require that ALL of the factors be met. There have been cases where only one factor was met, but was strong enough that the use was considered Fair Use anyways.
As for the amount of work used, there are no set rules defining how much can be used and still be considered Fair Use. In fact, there was a case in 2011 where a complete web article was used and the court still found that it was Fair Use.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110318/23595613558/big-big-loss-righthaven-reposting-full-art icle-found-to-be-fair-use.shtml
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