General writing question/copyright.

Cayal

The Immortal Prince
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Are buildings and landmarks protected by copyright?

If I am writing a story and I want to use (for example) the Supreme Court of Victoria would it be fine to write about any feature?

I posted a photo below, if I wanted to put a character in that dome bit on the top, is it fine or do is it copyright protected.

400px-Supreme_Court_of_Victoria.JPG
 
I imagine it wouldn't be an issue, otherwise most fiction would have to be other-world. I don't think you can copyright a locality, unless someone's created it in fiction - Hogwarts, for instance...
 
So even using the designs, floor plans or whatever of such buildings and the name of it is all good?
 
Yes, you can reference or use real-world locations in fiction. If you couldn't, there'd be no mainstream, crime, thriller or any other kind of non-sf or fantasy fiction.
 
Whenever copyright material is used with permission in a work of fiction, then a notice of that permission is given on or after the publication details page.
 
The only reason you'd need permission is if the details you use are not publicly available information. The interior layout of the pentagon's basement, for example, might not be public domain... In which case you'd just use your artistic license and make the pentagon basement look however you want it to! :)
 
Literary works (but not their titles), drawings, paintings, sculpture, music, and photographs are all copyright. The names of products may be trademarked. Otherwise, you don't have to worry.

Now if you copied an image of a building -- say if you included somebody's photograph of the building as an illustration or in the cover art, or if you used somebody's pen and ink rendering of the plan of the building in either of those ways -- then you would have to obtain permission from the person whose image (photo, drawing, or diagram) you were reproducing. Also, if you built an exact replica of the building, it's conceivable there might be a problem since you would be plagiarizing the architect's work. (But copyright doesn't last forever, and all of these things would eventually fall into the public domain.)

But to describe a public building in your own words, there is no copyright that you could possibly be violating.
 
If you were monumentally unlucky enough to provide an accurate description of somewhere that is highly restricted, there may be a problem.


Or maybe not.
 
Most building's floor plans are public property (for a fee though). God, that would be an annoying development, if buildings could start holding copyrights and trademarks. I'll bet Microsoft's working on it as we speak.:p
 
And who would receive the royalties? The original architect, the owner?
"Oh, you can set your story in the Taj Mahal, that's in public domain?

Perhaps a trust fund for the building itself, to cover repairs and cleaning, to stay beautiful?

I could suggest this to WIPO; and how about city streets? We could make any city you could recognise in a book subject to performing rights.

Mountain ranges might be a bit more difficult.

No, wait; tourist resorts pay authors (or at least subsidise their hotel bills) to set stories in their territory; they can't go charging it back…
 
Well, if Kentucky state can copyright Kentucky, then state controlled trademarking of natural landmarks wouldn't be too difficult. And parks would likely never close again. Wait, authors don't set their stories in parks! Um, slums would never go broke. Maybe.

I shall now go cut my tongue out for suggesting it, lest the governments of the world actually start to consider this...
 
Dear God. Lith maybe you should think about moving to Canada or somewhere else. States doesn't seem to be a healthy place for your kind of intellectual to live in.

A State copyrighting a landmass, my goodness, there is something seriously wrong going on there... </sarcasm>
 
I'll bet Microsoft's working on it as we speak.:p

Yup, Bill Gates already owns all of the 1's and 0's in all of the computers; why not expand his domain to reality? Did I say reality? I meant realty. Wait... what is reality? Where am I? Who am I? Have I dreamt this before? Sorry, I'm having Amnesia and De Ja Vu at the same time right now. Or was it earlier?

I will admit - I don't know how copyrights work outside the U.S. - We have the "Library of congress" that holds the copyrights for just about anything you can imagine that happens to be American, except buildings, roads, lakes, rivers, trees, animals, people... things like that. It's really late here. Sorry.

- Z.
 
Kentucky trademarked their name a few years ago. Thought it would bring in some extra income. And that's why KFC is no longer "Kentucky Fried Chicken", but something else.

I can only hope it fails spectacularly.

Move to Canada? Hm, I could make the border in a decent day's drive- but aren't Canadians a little leery of letting too many of us Americans in at a time?

Zubi- Microsoft doesn't care how you define your reality, as long as they get their share. So no worries then, once you sort it out for yourself.;)
 
Zubi, I know you are being whimsical, but I also suspect that you are confusing holding copyrights and recording copyrights. So far as I know, the Library of Congress does neither. The US Copyright Office registers copyrights. The Library of Congress collects and catalogues books, recordings, photographs, maps, and manuscripts -- but the copyrights remain in the hands of the authors and artists who create those books, recordings, etc. (Otherwise, they would be collecting our royalties, and that would not be a happy state of affairs.)
 
I hate to bring RIAA/MPAA angle here, but aren't they government agencies, that collect royalties on behalf of the artists?
 
I hate to bring RIAA/MPAA angle here, but aren't they government agencies, that collect royalties on behalf of the artists?

In the USA copyright protection is in the hands of private law firms; they are actually very backward in intellectual property protection. It was Reagan who signed the Bern convention, after all the South American counties, almost all of Asia, and it's still not fully implemented. The free market apparently considers anything you can get away with stealing, more luck to you.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation is based here in Geneva, but is always behind on technology; while my boss is vice president of the SUISA (limited to music, limited to one country, but with links to all equivalent organisations worldwide, plus parallel organisations like the SACD (authors and composers for dramatic work, where the music might have a different importance relative to the text)

While these (and most European rights societies) are government sponsored, they still take a cut out of the royalties they collect to cover their expenses.
Obviously, I know the music side better than text, but both are running scared of the potential for abuse represented by the web; and both are effectively run by lawyers.
 

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