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There seems to be no simple edit path to do this so Pam will have to dig in and remove them. Creating user galleries that you can edit yourself is on the to-do list and that chore looks like it got dumped on our new hire Lane, as did a bunch of other stuff that we have been wanting to change. This could take a while, but it will get done.
Jennifer,
I know we will be working with you on other projects and you will still be on the forum but I just want to say Thank You here for all your years of moderation, mediation, consternation, frustration and devotion to the cause. We would never have gotten this far without you.
That being said, I have no idea was a “trade dress” (that’s what the color sceheme is called, right?) is. You can’t copyright a color or a simple phrase or word, which is why retard Donald Trump could not copyright “you’re fired”. I would have assumed the colors are part of the art, the statue, and am not sure how multiple copyrights would work in that instance. It doesn’t sound like a patent, trademark, or trade secret, and those beside copyright are the only types of intellectual property recognized by U.S law.
Trade Dress refers to the distinctive decoration, coloration and design features of a product line, display materials, costuming of sales people, storefronts, Etc. that makes a product memorable and recognizable and which the copying of may create confusion for a buyer or client. Businesses have rights to their established Trade Dress and, as I recall, it is a matter of un-fair competition as protected by law. I.e. the use of gold trim on dragon wings and scales and other distinctive features.
Please correct me if I am wrong but I believe that copyright protects the expression of an idea and, in artwork, it is the visual expression that comprises the decoration as well as the composition of form. An infringement would be judged as being substantially similar, in whole or in part.
This may be getting way too complicated. Some pieces may require more time to repair than they are worth and need to be tossed, or if they are repaired to re-paint it would simply be at the re-painter’s expense of time. There is a limit to what is worth saving. A big problem with any of this is that the cost of a new casting is probably less than the cost of a lot of repairs.
I will have to do some math as the whole re-paint scheme may not work anyway, although I think we should continue to explore the idea. It would have to be a very simple system and easy to administrate.
We need a very close guess at how many pieces per month we are talking about and how much time re-painters are putting into them.
Anybody care to guess at how many damaged pieces come up for sale, in say a month, or six months that might be recyclable with a program like this? How many you think may already have been repaired and re-painted?
If we had an rough idea of the above it would better tell us what we would be dealing with in terms of necessary sales per month. I would think it is awfully many pieces.
Windstone has never attended to business in a conventional manner and I really like the idea of an official way to re-cycle broken pieces. There would have to be some assurance that the repairs were done properly. The painting would, with good photography and some control over the quality of materials used, speak for itself. I would think that destroying a good piece for the sake of re-painting it would be precluded by the cost of the piece as those that are in good condition tend to sell for quite a lot.
Well, as Pam said, the big issue for us is simply the confusion of trying to tell the Knockoffs from the re-paints. Something comes up for sale on eBay that is suspicious and we either have to make a determination from the picture what it is or I have to buy them and get a closer look. Not a huge problem yet, but if there are enough re-paints out there it will be. We understand that broken pieces are valuable and restoration is not always possible but I don’t think we want to bring it to the site.
I will now think out loud: If they were so great that we could sell them through the site as authorized re-cycled/re-painted Windstones it would be fun and solve the problem but they are not all going to be up to the same quality standard and we and the painter would have to make a profit on them. That probably wouldn’t work with the amount of time that goes into the painting and it would limit the painting to select painters. Might hurt some feelings of those who felt they should be included and weren’t. Your comments are welcome.
We didn’t mean to not inform everyone that the price was raised but, as I recall, we didn’t settle on a price until right before they went into the store. And, with everyone starting to chew the legs off their chairs from the wait, getting them into the store quickly was all we were thinking about. Sorry about that. We should have at least had a notice to that effect on the store page. Everything here seems to be done at the last minute. After much deliberation, but at the last minute
I just had a short conversation with Alan, our copyright attorney, and we will continue to discuss this next week but I believe I had misunderstood, or misremembered, a discussion we had a few years ago and I am probably not correct in what I first posted. LupusLunae has probably got it right (and thanks for jumping in Lupus!). My apologies to all, especially Pam, if this is the case, and it does seem like it is.
This is not an issue that we have ever had to litigate or one that I have done any real research into. The legal problems we have had concerning copyrights have always been ones of infringement and fair usage that include removal of copyright notice, trade dress, etc.
Does that mean we want to allow or disallow posting of re-painted pieces? We really don’t want to encourage re-painting. Re-pairing, restoring, that’s fine but re-painting of production pieces is, for us, a royal pain when these pieces are re-sold and confusion takes hold in the re-sale market. Breyer has used re-painting as a very well honed marketing tool to sell their horses and grow their customer base, but look at the original product. I don’t think I could ever view them as analogous to Windstone and our original product.
I am for removing re-paints from the forum and making it policy to not allow the posting of production re-paints, period. The PYO’s are designed and intended to be owner painted, sold, whatever and I don’t see any benefit to Melody or Windstone in the posting of images of re-paints of our production pieces.
Before this goes any further into misconception you all need to go to the following link and read the content. This is a pretty good, and the best I’ve seen, discussion of the law, and it is the law that is the problem. Yes, Trade Dress is a big issue with lookalike colorations, but that is not the foremost problem with re-paints. The problem is that modifications to an artist’s work without permission is not legal. Because the decoration as well as the sculpture is part of the copyrighted work, that would preclude re-paints. It doesn’t seem to matter for who’s consumption the modified work is intended. Restoration and repair is not an issue if the original work is retained but changing that work seems to be illegal. So, please take the time (especially Pam) to read the following: http://www.law.indiana.edu/ilj/volumes/v81/no3/2_Durham.pdf
Why does it matter? Because modifications to copyrighted work dilutes the distinctive look of the work it weakens protection. It’s really pretty simple and easy to imagine.
I vote somewhere in the range of 500×100 or something like that XD I like em big.
Was this what you were hinting at? I am a fish out of water today.
Oh! You are so helpful, thank you. 🙂 I was actually hinting for someone above my head to let me know… XD
Jennifer, really, by now you should have realized that we don’t know what we are doing. But we do sorely need banners for sites to put up so maybe take a poll and find out what people might want, and be prepaired to have two sizes of each if possible?
Good news, I’ve been tasked with manually inserting everyone’s missing gallery pics over the weekend( s ).
🙂
At least we think we can get pam set up to do this this weekend. It should be pretty straightforward but time consuming and I think Shaun has to get involved before Pam can start on it. In any case it will be done very soon.
I definitely have to second two things….
Number 1: In the store I would love to have the number of in stock items left again. That was super helpful when deciding what my next purchase should be.
Number 2: I agree that the online offline should maybe have a different online color because you really don’t notice much of a difference
otherwise everything is looking awesome!!
Clay will be adding an inventory window just as soon as he can figure out how to do it. We need it just as much as you guys do.
The online color should be simple to do.
If you guys go to the “my account link” and look over at the “track” tab that will show you all the threads you have made a post in that are showing new activity… just wasn’t sure if anyone knew that. I like the feature a lot
So, how did you manage to get this to post twice with the exact same time stamp??? That’s the first time I’ve seen that.
