"Miniatures intellectual property transfer—how's that work?" Topic

Not sure why but I've been kind of curious about how people track intellectual property rights on miniatures.

A few months ago, I realized some figure makers sometime buy up the rights to other foundries of the past.

I get how right transfer work, and I've got a decent enough understanding of copyright (which is what counts here).

Wen it comes to someone retiring or closing down and the buyer buys direct, that seems easy as can be (provided the sculpts are owned outright and not licensed by the sculptor).

What I find interesting, and curious about is:
1. Do the sculptors ever retain their rights to the model and just license it to the caster?
2. In the case of older molds, how does that work? Is it whoever owns the molds? That seems both practical and not how copyright works.

Again, just curious.

What's in the contract? That's the key.

Is the sculptor an employee of the company? Is he doing paid work? Unless he has it in his contract that he retains rights, it's the property of the company.
Was the sculptor leasing his rights to the company?

A patent example. A good friend of mine, who recently passed away, told me that in a previous job he noticed that in a high speed extrusion process, if he put a nub in front of the hole, the product came out coiled. The company then owned and patented the process. My friend was a tad bitter about that, since that was in his contract. He was an engineer.
This came up because I was joking about an extremely cheap way of shipping nets with hooks on them, and that I should patent it. I wasn't really serious about it, but he was dead serious about his case.

If the sculptor owns the company, the rights will …. Totally theoretical here. 😄 If he sells the company, all rights should be covered in the contract.
And if he passes, and the widow inherits, again contracts apply.

When the OFM was a YFM, there were quite a few one man band "true 25mm" companies. The owner died, and so did those lines.
My gaming friend and I came up with an imaginary scenario where the widow was offered the imaginary sum of $10,000 USD "for the rights", but a friend told her that it was "worth a lot more than that", and so the figures never saw the light of day again.

As for the molds and masters…. Go to the top of my reply, and read that sentence again.

Some current "large" miniature companies have been around a long time, with several owners. At each transfer, I'll bet that lawyers were involved.
There is one particularly messy example of a "true 25mm" company that had several lines by the same sculptor and… Like I said it was messy, particularly since lawyers were probably not involved. Nice figures. I have some units that are incomplete.

Obviously, every case is different. And so are the legal cases.

"Intellectual property" is too vague. It's almost meaningless.
You have to go to the strict legal terms like patent, copyright, royalties, etc.
plus the willingness of the "i p" holder to enforce their rights.
There is no one real explanation, and that's why lawyers make more money than I do.

1. Do the sculptors ever retain their rights to the model and just license it to the caster?

AFAIK those conventional sculptors who do contract work sell full rights to the company selling the figure, rather than licensing their designs. However, when it comes to digital design and 3D-printing, the process seems to be often license-based, with the digital "sculptor" selling licenses to multiple printing companies.

Then there are experienced sculptors who run their own business, sculpting the models and selling them to customers. However, they do not necessarily do the mouldmaking and model casting themselves, outsourcing these to a specialised company. My understanding is that the customers in these cases do typically own the moulds, though for practical purposes they are likely stored in the production facility. Good practice should involve clearly labelling all the moulds with information about their owner.

Back in the late 20th century there were sometimes cases with companies licensing foreign companies to produce their models abroad (to work around customs costs), but I am not aware of this really been a practice anymore.

2. In the case of older molds, how does that work? Is it whoever owns the molds? That seems both practical and not how copyright works.

In an ideal work, one would transfer both the copyrights and the physical materials (master models and moulds) with a contract at the same time, though whether this always happens in practice is another issue. The master models are quite important, since rubber moulds for metal models wear and need to be redone regularly. (Steel models for plastic models on the other hand may last very long, but are expensive to tool.)

Malchor, by all means check individual cases, but I think you'll find that when the sculptor doesn't own the company--as noted, very common at one point--it's almost always "work for hire." The sculptor provides a master figure in return for cash in hand, and the person who paid the cash is the one with the right to produce copies for sale. That person can then sell the rights--which is why you can't legally buy new original GW Squats, the Eureka Teddy Bear armies or any of the old Mike's Models line among many others. (If it wasn't work for hire, who would sculpt musicians or standard-bearers?)

There have been, of course, some fairly blatant piracies--and my own hands aren't clean, since I bought some. Best I can say is that I was in my teens, so it was a very long time ago. But in the cases of actual legal transfer of ownership, as noted master models are an important consideration.

Anyone know what happened to the old Minifigs 30's line--last seen--quite literally--in Wally Simon's basement?