Album artwork - creation of fibre art patterns

[sasswa]

Hi everyone,

I’m in the middle of recreating for personal use album covers as cross-stitch patterns. They are being stitched and look great.

I was wanting to sell some designs on Etsy and have them provided in kits for crafters to create themselves.

I’m now thinking of copyright infringements. I have seen some other artists album covers being sold as patterns but some are not identical and actually they wouldn’t be ‘identical’ as colours and grain can be different when the medium is converted to thread.

Thoughts please.

FYI - I am ok to proceed with asking for permission from record companies for certain prints if necessary

[AndyJ]

Hi sasswa and welcome to the forum,

It's hard to be definite about this because much will depend on the closeness of the copying. The law says that just because the copying is done using a different medium that does not remove the liability for infringement (see Section 17(3) and Section 21 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988), so it comes down to the test for whether a substantial part of the original has been copied.

It is arguably possible that you could rely of the exception to copyright in Section 30A, that is to say for the purpose of pastiche. Unfortunately we have yet to see a court in the UK decide a case involving this particular exception, which only came into being in 2014, so we don't know how they would view pastiche as a category of expression. This is in contrast to parody which the courts have examined and, to a certain extent, have provided some guidance on the necessary ingredients of a defence for parody. In your example, I think there would be strong grounds for saying that on economic grounds there is no detiment to the record labels which own the copyright in the album covers, because it cannot be said that your patterns take away potential sales of the albums. However I am sure that you wouldn't want to put yourself in the position of being the test case for this proposition!

It would probably do no harm to approach the record companies for permission. After all they may see this as a way to further monetise their intellectual property portfolio, and you can then decide whether the licence fee which they propose is acceptable.

[sasswa]

Thanks so much for this info. It is interesting.

What do they charge for licence fees these days? Any idea?

[AndyJ]

I very much doubt that there's a fixed scale. It will probably depend upon the fame/status of the actual album cover in each case.

[sasswa]

Thanks so much for all your replies