Pictures of fantasy miniatures as illustrations in a commercial rpg: legal problems?

[ZeroToHero]

Hello,

I was designing a fantasy heartbreaker to put as 'pay what you want' on rpgnow.

Do you think that i can use pictures of pathfinder miniatures and / or fantasy dioramas taken from the internet as illustrations without legal problems?

It's only a little game in italian language: not a Pathfinder competitor.

[CrystalSeas]

Not without permission.

Someone owns the copyright to those artistic works. Before you can use them in your own works, you need to get permission from those people.

For Pathfinder miniatures, you'll need permission from Piazo. For the dioramas, you'll need permission from whoever built the dioramas

[JPSTOD]

Why Not commission art?

[Skeld]

You can buy stock fantasy art for relatively cheap (at least you could the last time I looked in to it). There have been plenty of independent publishers that have done that.

-Skeld

Edit; And there's lots of art you can use royalty free.

[Tinalles]

So many layers here!

The sculptor who created the basic figure owns a copyright to the sculpture. Or possibly the company that sells the figure, if the sculptor assigned ownership of the copyright to them.

After that, the person who painted the mini may or may not qualify for a copyright. I'm thinking probably not, but I could be wrong.

After that, whoever took the photo of the mini pretty definitely has a copyright in the image (though not in the sculpture or the paint job).

And in the case of things like Pathfinder characters, those are trade dress for the company that owns them (Paizo in this case), which may involve both copyrights and trademarks.

Let's just not even go down the rabbit-hole of reconciling U.S. intellectual property law with EU law.

I recommend finding and licensing some more generic art, or else commissioning some from someone. It may be annoying, slow, and expensive, but in this case the fast-and-easy method of yoinking images from the Internet is a mine field of potential litigation.

[JPSTOD]

Who is a Layer..Who plays on on TV?
And what is a Layer?

[Haladir]

LPJ Design sells a series of stock art portfolios on DriveThruRPG. One of the artists featured is Storn Cook, a friend of mine, who does fantastic work. The portfolios are very inexpensive, and the art within can be used without restriction in game publishing.

Two of the portfolios include character art from our ongoing Dungeon World campaign. (My PC is in #36!)