Morton M5

[Leucetius]

I have a question related to copyright.

A friend of mine sent me a 3D model (3D Studio Max) of the Morton M5. It is a model engine one, dimensions in inch, bore x stroke 0.625 x 0.6in. I'm in the process of building it as CAD in Inventor 2013 and I'm trying to change it a little bit, so that it is buildable from bar stock.

My question is: after the conversion and changes, may I release the plans here or is this still an copyrights infringement?

Greetings
Leuc

 

[thayer]

That will all depend on the level of changes. I would think the best thing to do would be to talk to Bruce Satra about what you are doing and see what he thinks. He is a good guy and I expect will be reasonable if you detour enough from the original.

 

[GWRdriver]

This question has been brought up and discussed (and argued) at length (ad nauseum) many times on most modeling boards and there rarely seems to be a concensus. Unless otherwise stipulated (and paid for), design drawings and/or construction plans sold in the USA almost always convey the right to build only one example of the object. But what about using the design and plans to construction say foundry patterns, which convey the image of the item, from which many copies could be made (and sold) for profit? Does that violate a copyright? Not everyone agrees on what does and does not violate copyright. The other thing is, if someone lacks the principles and integrity to respect copyright (and MANY do) who's going to come after them? The actual monetary loss to the owner would be small, and the legal fees to pursue action very great. I know of an instance where an eBay seller was openly and notoriously selling copies of copyrighted hobby material, much of it from well-known model engineering suppliers, he sold at least 30 sets of counterfeit drawings for the Model Engineer Beam Engine that I counted, but the cost to pursue legal action would have been 1000s of times the loss of profits.

Specific to your question, one way of thinking of this would be that even though the M5 design and construction drawings may still be in copyright (my guess would be that they are), your friend has created a new work of "intellectual property" which itself is now copyrighted. If you have his permission to reproduce or publish that work then it should be OK. Someone could rightly argue, "Yes but it is based upon someone else's idea." Which would be true, but it is still new intellectual property because it is new work, and it's an interpretation of an idea, not a blatant copy of it.