Hi everybody On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 1:59 PM, bob catchpole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This is why the AMERICAN system is so fucked up!... > > IN THEORY IT'S TRUE "If somebody swipes it, or uses it without your > permission, you have the law on your side to chase them down and get paid." > > BUT IN PRACTICE "Not if you haven't registered the copyright."
In France it's also true; Two years ago, my brother rented a restaurant for the summer; it was almost totally empty, except the hoven and other heavy kitchen stuff. he created all the menus, all the "brand" of the restaurant from scratch. This included the making of a drawing of the place (made by the mother of his girlfriend), which was used on advertisement and menus. He ran this restaurant for a couple of month (summer) with his girlfriend, while keeping rather bad relationships with the owner of the place. When they left the place, after the season, the owner asked them a menu, as a "souvenir". The year after that, my brother went back to the restaurant; he saw that the menu was almost the same than the one he created, including the drawing, which was very slightly modified, but definitely created from the former drawing he used... So he sued the owners of the restaurant, mainly for the use they made of the picture (not the menus, etc...) It has taken several months (French justice...), but he lost: the court, while implicitly recognizing that his drawing was used as a basis for the next ones, decided that they were just two different drawing of the same place, taken from the same angle, with the same "style" (because it was not 100% figurative), etc... just imagine how a mere photograph could possibly be "protected" with this kind of court... It was basically a court specialized in trade affairs, so my brother thinks that there has been some kind of "lobbying" : the jury is a group of people who work in commercial stuff, and he is not, so they simply defended their peers... Now he even has to give money to the owner because of the "prejudice" ! In theory, he should have won, but in reality, it depends on the court, on who you are suing, probably, and on many other things... +++++++ Clément _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour