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I have emailed Marvel about this, but it could be ignored, get lost or be months before they reply, so I thought there must be some clever people here who may know

Recently I picked up my pens & pencils again and got into drawing. I then stumbled upon a magazine that came out over here in the UK that dealt with drawing Marvel characters. I only lasted for 4 issues, but it got me interested and fired up. So currently I'm running through the tutorials over and over, trying to perfect my technique. My aim is to produce versions that are coloured using either watercolours, Photoshop or airbrushing. At first I will stick them in my portfolio, but if good enough I'd like to be able to sell them. Produce A1 or A0 size versions.

I see in a local gallery that they are selling Marvel themed canvas's. If you are producing "one off" pieces to sell, how does this work with regard to copyright / licensing?

A dakkanaut will give you three answers, all of which will be terrifying (and wrong).

Talk to a lawyer.

Going to steal an answer posted to a similar question on a copyright forum.


The artwork within a game is subject to copyright, and that would include the likeness of individual characters, and to a lesser extent some background scenery where it was particularly recognisable/identifiable to the game. The law says that copying a substantial part of a protected work would amount to copyright infringement. There is a certain amount of room for doubt over what might or might not be considered a substantial part. General background scenery alone probably wouldn't be protected, but most major characters probably would.
Names of the characters probably aren't protectable with copyright because names alone seldom qualify, as they are judged to be 'facts', but some may be protected by being registered as trade marks (as for instance with this rather banal example: Supermario).
Both words and images can be registered as trade marks and you should definitely avoid using them if they are registered, as there is a high likelihood that Nintendo or other games companies could successfully sue you in order to protect their brands.
Conversely, it is possible that the fact that there are so many other examples of artwork of this sort could be due to Nintendo tolerating a certain amount of 'fanfiction' type adulation of their games because it helps to promote awareness and popularity - a sort of unofficial advertising for the game itself. This might also account for the fairly relaxed statement from Nintendo. They don't want to give you explicit permission because that could limit their ability to sue others who are copying the game itself, but they may be hinting that low level adaptations of their artwork is OK.
Returning to the law, there isn't much in UK law to support straightforward copying of the sort you wish to do, but creating art which is influenced by another work is generally less of a problem. So the less specific or detailed you are in your depictions, and the more you add of your own original creativity, the better your position becomes. A second possible defence would be that of parody, but from the sound of things that doesn't describe your kind of art, since there would need to be a moderate degree of poking fun or satire involved for this defence to succeed.
Possibly the best approach would be to try selling a small quantity of your artwork via a popular outlet (Deviantart or whatever) and wait for a reaction. The most likely response from Nintendo, assuming that they object at all, would be a cease and desist letter. And if this happens and you do cease selling the works complained about, that should be all the hassle you get. I very much doubt that Nintendo would wish to take matters further because of the possibility of bad publicity which might alienate some fans of the game, and because apart from stopping you from selling more artwork, the only thing a court case might bring them would be an award of damages based on the amount of your sales. If you had only made a few pounds, this would not be an economic course of action.
This approach is not entirely risk free, and it might get your account with the website closed down, but I think it might be the best way to test the water.


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TL;DR.

It is technically illegal, but there are so many around that it is hard to do anything about it. If Marvel do decide to intervene, listen to them.

The way I see it, you have two 'safe' options:

1) Discuss it with a lawyer.
2) Don't sell them.

In this case, going with #1 may well end with #2 as an answer anyway.

 Wolfstan wrote:
If you are producing "one off" pieces to sell, how does this work with regard to copyright / licensing?

You're almost certainly breaking the law, you're just doing it on a small enough scale that you're not worth suing.

That sounds fair enough. I assume that these artists that sell in galleries must have some sort of agreement with Marvel and pay a fee of some sort. I understand that if you were producing t-shirts, say, you would pay marvel a fixed licence fee. It will be interesting to see how that works on such a small scale.

Thanks for the feedback anyway.