Curious if their are any issues with lets say…re-creating a scene from a movie or a place that exists in real life?
Plenty of good inspiration out there and while you surely won’t be making everything exactly as it is in the movie/real life it would be obvious to know where the idea came from.
Anyone have any insights on this? Been searching around for a bit and found things here and there but not really a solid answer. It may even just be a case by case thing.
While this is just an example and the intent was to sell on the marketplace; Is there some sort of copyright issues here? Or because it’s impossible to re-create the scene exactly as it sits in the movie is there really not an issue? If there is a copyright issue what happens if its released for free?
I would say it’s not safe for making it any type of commercial project.
You can normally only copy ideas or gameplay elements never assets or art. However if you want a definitive answer you need to seek legal advice.
You can however recreate a scene for like educational reasons and show it off ask for feedback. I still don’t think you should release for free either. If I decided to make a commercial project from your free assets I couldn’t say legally who is responsible (me or you). I think it could be you tho.
Bottom line is never take advice from a forum as truth. It’s better to seek professionals.
We wouldn’t be able to allow the case stated in your example. Essentially you’d be attempting to profit off of someone else’s intellectual property, and companies like Disney have entire departments full of lawyers looking for people that do this so they can take legal action to protect their IP. Even if you’re going for “sort of like Tron” instead of “exact copy of Tron,” that’s still murky. The more specific and similar it looks, the more reasonable it is someone could mistake it for Tron, the more likely you’ll be to get in trouble for it.
To get more specific, it’s typically iconic and recognizable logos, fonts, shapes, colors, and silhouettes that stand out the most to make something seem infringing. In the example you posted above, building out a sci-fi set with slick reflective white paneling, glowing lights, raised\lowered platforms, etc would be less likely to seem infringing than if you tried to create the Tron character and the lit-up symbols and shapes on the body, which are much easier to identify as part of the Tron franchise. That crosses the line from inspiration into probable infringement, because there are plenty of sci-fi movies, shows, and games that have environments with similar lighting and materials.
