Expert: Christopher Quereau - 9/18/2009

Question
"I have a general question regarding copyright.

I am a photographer and collage artist.

I wanted to know how I stand regarding the kind of collage art I intend to produce.

If I take my own photograph of an item (ill use an example of something I'm working on now) a toy figure of an animal of which I know is in itself copyrighted (ie:the design of the figure no company logo) and use my photograph of this in a work of art which has other images elements in it created by myself of which I then intend to license the work of art for sale to publications. Would this be legal or a breach of copyright."
I suppose what I am saying is, if I take a photograph that has a product in it and that products design is copyrighted would I be allowed to use that photograph to produce a collage/work of art I could license and sell. As I understand I own the copyright of the photograph because I took the picture.

Answer
Hi, first off sorry for the delay on response.

1. I'm not a lawyer and you should consult one - My knowledge in this subject is about ten years old -  however from what I remember if you change a copyrighted item in at least 3 ways for artistic purposes then you can resell the item - the important items here are "for artistic purposes" and "3 ways" so a change in sizes, color, shape, etc would work. This is something you should definitely ask a lawyer about - the bottom line is if someone wants to sue you it does not really matter what the law says only how good and expensive their lawyers are - so I always avoid copyrighted material.