Hi,
Would I breach copy right permission if I included a drawing of the car from bang bang chitty chitty bang bang in a book I am slef publishing?

Thanks,
rac

Hi Rac - I'm not an expert on copyright issues, but logic dictates that if you use a photo or drawing owned by anyone, even your own depiction (if it's an obvious rendition of a known object), you at least need their permission, and then credit it as such in the caption of the picture.

I would recommend contacting Disney. A company of that caliber is one you don't want to take chances with, and I'm sure they would appreciate your asking.

Disney in particular is notorious for aggressively protecting its intellectual property and for never missing an opportunity to charge money.

Professor - Oh I'm sure they are! That's why it's important to check though, might save a lawsuit down the road

quote:

Originally posted by Professor:
Disney in particular is notorious for aggressively protecting its intellectual property and for never missing an opportunity to charge money.

Oh man, are they! Some little cafe in Armpit, Kansas had Disney characters painted on their facade. They got a letter from the Disney legal dept demanding $100,000 a year in royalty payments. Needless to say, the figures got painted over.

Yeah, I think I saw that story a few months ago.

I spent a summer employed by Walt Disney World. Their "security hosts" ran a tight ship, too. Workers clocked in, then rode a bus to the employees' entrance. One day the bus was stopped mid-route and boarded by security guys, who nabbed an employee trying to sneak his friend into the park. I never saw either again.

Are you talking about copyright on the book or on the movie?

"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", by Ian Fleming, was first published in 1964 by Jonathan Cape in the UK. As I understand it, that publisher is now part of the Random House group.

There is a copyright on the book. (If you look at the book at Amazon or Amazon UK, you will see this.) and I am pretty sure it would cover John Burningham's illustrations of the Ian Fleming novel.


If you have any doubts about using illustrations from this book, I would suggest you contact the publisher and ask permission.

The difficulty I had here, was finding out who owns the copyright in the UK. There are several different editions of the book, all with different publishers.



Often, an author or illustrator will initially own the copyright, but sign it over to the publisher. Random House in the US is probably your best first contact here. They list the book as one published by them.

Here is their permissions page: Permission for using material owned by Random House

As a follow up idea, try contacting the publishers listed at Amazon UK for UK permissions.

Hope this is of some help.

Too late to edit my post, but the more I think of it, you probably meant the movie pictures, didn't you?

In which case heed the warnings posted already!

It's the story of my life. Everyone else thinks movies, and I think books !

Well anyway, the book was better than the movie, and incidently, the only children's book written by Fleming.