Copyrighted material use on cakes

[brink]

I have seen an amazing number of cakes out there with copyrighted materials on them...examples being, Disney characters, Racing paraphanalia, Spiderman, etc.

My question is...when a decorator uses such images, without the use of edible images or licensed plastics, do they write for written permission? I know that many companies such as Disney do not give permission to duplicate images, mainly for quality reasons.

I wonder because on the images I have used that are copyrighted or trademarked etc., I do write the company for the permission or use the "approved" products for the images.

Are these decorators simply unaware of the legalities or are they just taking a risk? Also, if the images are illegal, why would you put a picture of it on a webpage?

I don't want to come across as agitator, I'm seriously curious.

Thank you!

[fodigger]

There is a company out there called KopyKat I believe, They are based in Palos Verdes CA. They have made lisensing(sp) deals w/ alot of the major companies that has allowed them to reproduce the images on transfers that are used on cakes. So, made that is where they get the transfers.

[fodigger]

Anyway it's hard to believe that they wouldn't be legal w/ something as blatant as that. I would hope anyway.

[Isa]

I think it is legal if you purchase the images or figures but you can not designed them yourself if you want to sell the cakes.


For example if you make a cake in a Mickey Mouse mould you can use it for your kids birthday but you can not sell it to someone else.