Are camouflage patterns copyrighted?
Tuesday, July 17, 2018 - 13:47
Hello, does any of you know, if it is legal to use common camouflage patterns in open source projects?
I made some photos of military camo clothes with the intend to use them for game art, but now I'm not sure, if that is even legal, since I read somewhere that camouflage patterns are copyrighted or at least some are.
It is not special camo patterns, just the generic ones you get on all the clothings, like woodland, urban etc so they cannot be that copyrighted, if everyone uses them for their clothes, or does everyone who uses them buy a license?
Some are trademarked, yes. For example "Realtree" has a trademarked camo pattern. Most generic ones are not trademarked, but it depends on what you consider "generic". Do you know the clothing brand in the images? If they're official US military fatigues, it still depends because the newer gear is commissioned by a private clothing firm that may have a trademark on the pattern. I should be able to give a better answer after seeing the picture, though.
--Medicine Stormdeleted
The Flecktarn ones (#4, #5), as well as the Tigerstripe (#2) are most likely subject to the Berne convention under German and Republic of Viet Nam governments, respectively. The "tundra" variant of the ERDL pattern (#3) may be public domain, but I'll have to do some more research. I haven't seen #1 or #6 before, but they look like Mil-tec proprietary. Sorry. :/
--Medicine StormSo better not use any of those and generate my own it seems.
Though it may fall through the analog loophole, if one really wanted to use them, since you are not using the direct pattern, but an analog photo of a physical object having this pattern, therefore you are not using it directly, this is similar to filming your screen where a proprietary movie is running, which is also legal.
Yeah, looks like it. Sorry.
Hah! Well, the analog loophole is analogous to the difference between open-licensed and fair-use. People could use many assets under fair-use, but that doesn't make them openly-licensed. Yes, you could do that, but submitting such things on OGA would get a raised eyebrow from me. :)
--Medicine Storm...In My original Patterns and Cursors pack I have a fatigue type pattern (shown in the example below). I made it myself without looking at any references... but is it still ok? If not I can pull it out and update my pack accordingly.
@Cougarmint
Don't worry about your few pixels, that is not an issue, we are talking about replicating real camo patterns here like on photo.
@Duion: Thanks for your input. I'm always conscious about making sure I don't inadvertantly violate copyright stuff.