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Getting Permission to Use Copyrighted Illustrations

5 replies [Last post]
Anonymous

I am working on a new war boardgame that I hope will have illustrations on the unit counters (instead of sillouhettes). I have found a great source for illustrations in a book on WWII Vehicles.

But, I need to know how one goes about getting permisison to use copyrighted illustrations. Has anyone done this in the past?

Thanks

Anonymous
I haven't done this...

myself but the first step could be contacting the publisher of the book. They might not bend over backwards to help you, but if it's a large publisher they have deparments dedicated to such things as licensing and rights (but I'm not sure if Simon & Schuster's legal department will give you much attention).

At a smaller publisher they should at least be able to tell you if they own the rights to the illustrations, or the artist does, and they might be nice enough to give you contact info for the artist, or more likely, at least give you their address with an attention to name in which they'll forward the letter along.

I've only worked at small book publishers in the past, so I'm not sure if there is a better way (and this way can be time consuming and maybe lead to a quick dead end if no one wants to bother to help you out).

Best of luck.

RookieDesign
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Getting Permission to Use Copyrighted Illustrations

I tried to contact Blizzad entertaiment for borrowing some Diablo II pictures. I never hear from them. I read their licensing guideline, but not quite fit the description they provide. They talk a lot about web page design but not much about printed material.

Just to let you know.

Anonymous
Getting Permission to Use Copyrighted Illustrations

I'm not sure if you are in the USA, but the patent office allows searches.

http://www.copyright.gov/records/

You may not have all the information you need, but it may be a good start.

Anonymous
Getting Permission to Use Copyrighted Illustrations

If the publisher owns the copyrights to the images, that they would be the place to start. Look in the book for photo credits, typically there is a section of a comment next to each picture showing who owns the copyright on that image. If the images are WWII era (as opposed to modern pictures of WWII equipment), then you may be dealing with estates or other holding companies.

Just out of curiosity, are you publishing the game yourself or just developing a prototype or a home use final product? If you're not publishing, then you probably won't need to secure copyright permission of the images. If you send a prototype to a publisher, it would then be up to the publisher to secure copyright permission to use the images or come up with images of their own.

Anonymous
Getting Permission to Use Copyrighted Illustrations

Thanks for all of the replies.

My current thoughts are to publish the game myself via the DPT route.

Tom

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