A "Good rule of Thumb" If you recognize the character you know it has a copyright to it: All Disney characters, Precious Moments, Cartoon characters, Logo's. etc. Even Greeting cards are copyrighted. This means we decorators really have to be creative in our designs. Sometimes we get lucky when we read where we can use the design as long as we give credit to the person who designed it and I say, "Thank you" to them.

Thank you everyone for all the great info. I'm so glad there is a place to ask all these questions and get some good info. Thank you Jason for your legal insights and helping to set us all straight.
I appreciate the copyright/trademark laws. If I was on the other side of the coin, I would want to be compensated, otherwise why bother getting something copyright/trademark'd?

Very interesting reading all these posts. I have recently been taking cake decorating classes for fun. My son's birthday is coming up and thought I would make him a special cake with a collage of players from the Oregon Ducks Rose Bowl team with the trophy. My instructor had told me if I took a picture to a bakery with the ability, they would print the picture for me as long as I told them it was for personal use and not selling it. The bakery informed me they couldn't do it without a release as they would be making a profit.

Where I work, we charge for any edible image we make, so we can't do any licensed characters or sports teams or anything like that.  Our bosses put their foot down this year with a written memo sent to each store telling us what we could and couldn't do because of copy write/trademark violation. I'm glad they did,. I can't afford that fine. For the parent who wants to do a character cake, buy the pan. The odds are good Wilton has the one you want. they cost around $10.00. probably a little more. It's been a while since I looked into it. but that would be a way to legally do your child's cake. a bakery, however, can't use the pans because they would be using it over and over and the copy write owners wouldn't get their money.

I just received a notice this morning for copy right infringement! I have a bride who is ordering a cake topper from someone on etsy and she was showing me the character from The Game of Thrones, so I right clicked it and copied it to put with her cake order so I would know what's being provided as a cake top. I did not put the image on a cake, in fact they wouldn't have known I even have a cake shop, just someone from my ip address clicked on it. They are watching and if you actually use an image and then post it on fb they will have you. I sent back an explanation to them, basically what's in this post. I was surprised to get it, I'm one of the very few in my area that has it posted on my site I will not do a trade marked character or image and stick to it! Here's the condensed version of what I received:

Dear Comcast High-Speed Internet Subscriber:

Comcast has received a notification by a copyright owner, or its authorized agent, reporting an alleged infringement of one or more copyrighted works made on or over Comcast's High-Speed Internet service (the 'Service').  The copyright owner has identified the Internet Protocol ('IP') address associated with your Service account at the time as the source of the infringing works.  The works identified by the copyright owner in its notification are listed below.  Comcast reminds you that use of the Service (or any part of the Service) in any manner that constitutes an infringement of any copyrighted work is a violation of Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy and may result in the suspension or termination of your Service account.
 

Copyright work(s) identified in the notification of claimed infringement:

Title:        Game of Thrones
Timestamp:    2014-05-12T16:46:54Z
IP Address:   50.169.118.251
Port:         10152
Type:         BitTorrent
Torrent Hash: df89d8d4459f1a0d451a0ac747a0ba4c1edf7c0f
Filename:     Game of Thrones S04E06 HDTV XviD-FUM[ettv]
Filename:     Game of Thrones S04E06 HDTV XviD-FUM[ettv]
Filesize:     425 MB

Thank you for posting this. It's not just an unverified anecdote but a specific example of how copyright infringement is a perilous journey. 

AOhhhhh boy. Well, there it is. I have a feeling that this sort of thing will start happening more frequently. And by all rights, it should.

ASo wait.....where was the photo posted [@]cfao[/@]?

the image I copied was a google image. I have called & emailed comcast because the dates didn't add up. It looks like someone tapped in to our wireless & downloaded the game, so it wasn't my image that sparked the email after all. It looks like a big coincidence that it was the same game?

AThey're saying you were hacked? But the file size was only 425 MB. That has to refer to the photo, right? Sounds to me like their bot made a boo boo and that's what they're saying to cover their butts. Last I checked, it's not a problem to right click and down load photos. It's what you do with them.

Maybe a computer savvy person will comment. On a side note, I hate $@?#!ing Comcast. They have a monopoly where I live, and in that circumstance, one gets to see what kind of jerks run it. I'd boycott them if I could.

A

Is it possible that somebody downloaded an episode of the show? That will also spark an email regarding infringement. My husband fills his external hard drive with random shows and movies before deployments since his internet usually sucks and he will have stuff to watch. He once received a notive after downloading Avatar. Basically all it said was he had to delete it...which he did. One time, he spent about two weeks downloading all the episodes of MASH. Imagine how ticked off he was when he went to watch it and was dubbed in Russian, or something crazy..lol

It's just myself and hubby, our son is 1600 miles away in college. Neither of us would download a show or game, Our son gets home from college next week, so he will be able to change anything whether it's needed or not, wireless passwords and such

That file name on the Game Of Thrones isn't a photo, it's an episode of the series. Bittorrent is a file sharing service where you can download shows from other people and watch them illegally. Does someone at your house download files to watch? That's how all those parents got sued and Napster got shut down!

ASorry... my brain reverses KB and MB for some reason. So please disregard what said. Except, I still hate Comcast, hahaha :)

Oops. didn't see your response. It's possible that someone's on your network, just change your password. I see teenagers sitting in front of people's houses using their internet connections all the time. I don't know why people still have unsecured networks, but I guess some do.

ANo kidding, who on earth doesn't lock down their signal?!

AOh yeah...that is an episode of GOT. Episode 6 from Season 4. Didn't catch that before cause I didn't even look at that part or of your post.

That's exactly what they are thinking happened. We have passwords on everything, but somehow someone must have tapped in to our wireless. We are in a neighborhood that everyone has at least an acre of land and the only new neighbors moved in last fall that have a teenage girl, but they are 3 homes away. Other than that all of the neighbors have been here 15+ years. We're trying to figure out who would bother to even download something using our internet, everyone has their own

If they did that it would make more sense, maybe the girl 3 homes away downloaded it or she has a boyfriend that did. By town law here you have to have at least an acre to build a home, most people have more than that so there's a pretty good distance between houses here.

AAck...didn't mean to insult you with my outburst, wasn't thinking of you specifically, more like blurting out loud...apologies if that sounded harsh!

No insult taken, I'm just trying to figure this thing out. The guy at Comcast was insistent that we must have downloaded this, then when I told him there was no way it was us he backed off a bit and said it was probably a neighbor. I have an email into them for them to look into it and really see if they can figure out what's going on. I'll check with a couple of the neighbors when they get home to see if they got this message also.

On a side note, at least we know now it wasn't the "image police" because I copied an image for a bride's file :)

A[B][/B] Did the origional notice even tell you what you would need to do to rectify things ( had it actually been you)? I would have expected them to advise you how to fix things. Somebody above said Comcast would have to do their due diligence before assessing any fines, for sure! I just wonder if they gave you any "suggestions". They simply told my husband to delete it, which he happily did...he knew he was in the wrong, so it's not like he was going to fight them about it. I'm glad you are trying to get to thre bottom of it, and they seem willing to help. It will be interesting to see how it turns out for you! @MB....I've never heard of that happening before! I guess I'm happy being mostly computer illiterate, it keeps me out of trouble! Lol :USA:

The only thing I didn't post here that was on the original email was my name, address and contact info. I'm a stickler for copy rights and have turned away many orders because a customer insists they want a figure made or an image printed, so when this came through for copyright infrigment the first thing I thought of is you've got to be kidding lol

I'd never heard of it either.  I took it to the local internet provider.  They were baffled.  They called their IT people.  They were baffled.  They did not know what it meant or what to do about it, and never found an answer or got back to me about it.

everything made by people is fallible.  Sorry to hear about your situation Cfao.