Warm Regards wrote:EDIT: Actually, I'm honestly not sure on this... Can a company use fanwork without asking? Or would they get in trouble?
Ive had this happen with my own fan art. Lego used my render of Andy's room without my permission to market their Toy Story 3 line.
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2753/4306 ... a15e_o.png
They're not supposed to do it, but no one will get in any real trouble I don't think. All that happened in my case was I mentioned it to Lee Unkrich through twitter, and within a couple days it was removed and eventually replaced. I got an email telling me it was done in error, and requested that I not talk about it publicly (oops, lol)
One thing that makes this a bit different is this isn't a website, they cant just replace it as in all likelihood they've already printed their run of that issue, so there's no going back. The most they would do is issue a correction or sorts in a future issue. That's only if they feel their reputation is at stake and it needs to be addressed. But they probably wont even do that. They'll probably just apologize privately if they can contact the artist, but that's it.
But yeah, I'm assuming, as with mine they simply Googled the name of the movie, and assumed it was an official image when it was not.
I asked a few people who seemed knowledgeable on copyright law, they all seem to agree I would not have a case in court if I wanted to entertain it, because I didn't own the property in the first place. Only if they continued to use my art would I have anything on them. I assume the same is true here.
CLUCK
