Just wondering if there are any copyright issues when using characters in a logo. More specifically, the logo is for a book store, and sicne alice in wonderland was a book, I have a picture of alice (along with other characters) on the book stores logo. Someone said that it was a disney trademark and I'm not allowed to use it. Is that true?

If you're talking about the disney "look" - the blond in the blue dress and white apron - then yes, that IS disney's copyrighted image and no you can't just use it.

In fact any image you take out of a book is that particular artist's copyright; just because the story may not be able to be copyrighted doesn't mean the image associated with any given printing is open domain.

Which Alice are we talking about? This one?

Or this image?

It's that second one - Disney's version.

So that means it cant be used? Does Disney give permission for things like this? Is there anywhere I can get permission from? What if I write somewhere on the page that has the logo something like:

"Alice character is a trademark of Disney"

Or something? Are there any other solutions?

Thanks

I have worked with Disney previously (did a Goofy skateboarding game for PC), and they are very strict on use of their property. You must get approval from them to use the image, especially for commercial purposes, or their lawyers will come down on you like a ton of bricks. I very much doubt that you will get approval since they hold control of their property very tightly.

Disney does not own alice as a character, nor the fact that she is in a blue dress, white apron and has blonde haired female. This is stated in the story. While you cant copy their interpretation, you can come up with your own.

American mcgee came up with his own version for alice in his game (called alice). She was made brunnette and more crazed compared to the light hearted alice normal portrayed.

As long as your alice does not have the same facial features and look, they cant to anything. To make things easier, find a model willing to dress up as alice to use as a reference. The victorian dress she wears in the disney version is the same dress in the book. It is also the same dress artists have been using for ages to depict her in since thats is what she wore.

http://bizrate.lycos.com/buy/products__at_id293467--253411-,cid--14010202.html

is where you can find alice costumes. Note that there is no mention of disney at all since it is not a disney character. The only thing disney has is a copyright on alice as depicted in the show. they dont own the character only the exact look they use in their animation. They do own goofy and mickey.

Just dont pick only disney "owned" stories and you should not have any problems. I would however be very careful with seven drawves since they are very stylized.

Sleeping beauty should not be a problem, simply a princess sleeping.
Beauth and the beast can be problematic if you can only picture the beast as disney's stylized form instead of other things. Same with the hunchback or notre dame. Pretty much you will need to hire an artist that can create based on teh original works, and not rehash what disney has done. People will still recognize the characters since they should resemble what is stated in the original stories. though the faces, heights, body proportions, clothes shall be different enough to be new creations.

Thats the problem when a large corp attempts to make moeny off public domain material. It makes it diffiuclt to reimage the characters looks since you get jaded from see it animated.

What other characters are you planning?

In short, if you have an artist that creates his own version of alice (and any other public domain story character) you should not have any problems at all. Dont allow the artist to reference disneys works, instead have them create the characters as they feel they should look based on how they saw the characters in the story.

oops, forgot to login, that was my post above.

Quote: Original post by transformation
It's that second one - Disney's version.

So that means it cant be used?

That is correct. As mentioned above you could get an artist to draw their own Alice, but given that what you want is an Alice that everyone will recognise as Alice (in other words the Disney one) you are pretty stuffed. The best way to make the image recognisable would be to have something other than just Alice (such as the Mad Hatter or Queen of Hearts) in the picture with her - however, given you want several character from different books that might not suit either.

Quote: Does Disney give permission for things like this?

Your shop is a commercial venture (so you plan to make money from it). You want to use Disney's (recognisable) property to advertise your business. That means you are using their character to make money - they would certainly expect you to pay them for the rights to use it. Given their lawyers probably cost $1,000 per hour you can see that any fee would have to be pretty large to make it worth their while.

Quote: What if I write somewhere on the page that has the logo something like:

"Alice character is a trademark of Disney"

As above, you would be using their property to make money - they wouldn't be happy.

The only solution is to have your own Alice done by an artist or come up with some other idea for a logo. It simply wont be cost effective to use the Disney one.

ok, thanks for your input guys. much appreciated.