Hi everyone,

It was just brought to my attention that using the likeness of Disney characters and such can constitute a copyright infringement - so how do we as cake decorators follow through with customers requests for a Disney Cars cake, for instance, without getting ourselves into trouble?

Thanks for your help!
Rhea

I usually recommend licensed character toppers on a generic cake with a corresponding color scheme. If the customer insists on a custom design, I require the customer to provide written authorization from the copyright owner before the order can be accepted.

The answer is simple. You don't.

I already have someone asking for another Disney cake so I will take your advice Jason and tell them that I will only use the liscenced cake topper and do some funky colours and designs to compliment it. Thanks again for the advice.

I agree with Jason. I've done two "character" cakes that had only background sorts of things, no copyrighted material. My cars cake had a street #5 with desert background, client put toy cars on top, and my Little Mermaid had only miscellaneous underwater stuff, with a purchased Ariel candle as topper.

I won't do them anymore, but partly for an egotistical reason than anything else. This area is drowning in Mickey/Dora/Thomas/anything from google that's been done a million times. Serious lack of creativity and imagination these days. I want no part of it. And yeah, the pesky copyright thingy too.

Jason, I did not know that you could do that! That is really an excellent alternative. Do you happen to know how long it takes for said company to get back to people with written consent?

Rhea, you can also order from supply companies such as deopac. by doing this you have bought the right to use that product. It is a great alternative and they do have awesome things.

Don't you have to use the Decopac kits exactly as shown on their example cakes though? Like, if the cake shows the topper in a specific place, you can't go change up the design at all? Or am I imagining things?

Well, I think they might object if you used it in such a way as could be considered even slightly defamatory.

Walt Disney World has a number of backstage tours. One of them, "The Magic of our Steam Trains," was conceived and implemented by two WDWRR cast members (a conductor and an engineer, as I recall). Their vision was of actual WDWRR cast members taking guests back to the Roundhouse, letting them climb into the cab of a (cold) locomotive, demonstrating a boiler blowdown (what they do to purge the sediment from a steam locomotive boiler), and finishing with a brief lecture about Walt's history with trains, all before the park opens in the morning.

Management barely tolerated the tour. Until it turned out to be a big hit.

For the badge issued to tour guests, and the souvenir pin handed out at the end of the tour, management decided to use the designs that the WDWRR people had come up with, with only minor redrawing by Disney artists (strictly to ensure conformity to the standard Mickey Mouse character design).

At Disneyland, when one of the Disney artists painting watch faces in the clock-and-jewelry shop on Main Street comes up with an entirely new design, it has to be submitted for official review before it can actually be scanned onto a watch face; even if you pay the big bugs, and commission a custom watch, you can still only get trivial variations (e.g., personalization and so forth) on pre-approved designs.

Now on the other hand (going back to Florida for a moment), if you take the granddaddy of all backstage tours, the 7-hour, 3-parks-with-a-private-bus Backstage Magic tour, you'll probably see a fair amount of Disney art, by cast members, that hasn't been formally approved for public consumption. But it's in a backstage area, BSM guests are considered "privileged," with access to a lot of things not for public consumption, and unless you're an official Disney photographer, backstage areas are no-photography zones anyway, so what's hanging on the backstage walls stays backstage.

In regards to DepoPac kits, if you call their customer service they will tell you that if you order a DecoPac licensed character cake kit, you are only authorized to decorate the cake exactly as shown in the picture that comes with the kit. I looked into that some time back when I was deciding what I would and would not do when I opened my business.

I made a Harry Potter cake exactly like the kit in the grocery store showed. I used the little figure. The cake was a gourmet cake with Italian meringue buttercream colored exactly like the picture. I made textures in the buttercream, and wrapped the little paper "Quidditch" towers around a square column. There were fondant accents. When I finished, it looked just like the authorized cake for supermarkets (airbrushed), but the quality was evident.

The other option I offer is the toys. I make the background cake and add tons of toys. My grandson had $45.00 worth of "Cars" toys on his cake. A client recently had a cake with the entire top covered with a Thomas The Train toy, tracks and all. Children love these cakes and they are legal.

I'm in WV so I bought the official WVU cake and cupcake pans (very expensive). There are no restrictions on these pans. Now I can offer these highly popular products.

Double post

The great thing about decopac is that you are limited to just their expensive "kits". In fact I rarely buy the kit. They have rings, picks, pop tops and edible images. I am however still loving Jason's thought and yesterday told a customer I'd be happy to make her an avengers cake if she came back with written permission from Marvel! She was excited that in her words "a small town mom like me can contact a huge person like Marvel."

I think the best advice I can offer is when it comes to copyright, when in doubt just pass. Better safe then sorry. And as for the comment that so many CC cakes are of licensed things, yes there are a few CC'ers who say to heck with copyright I'll take my chances; the majority of us do them for friends and family and for zero cost. By zero cost I mean (speaking for myself) I take no money, no materials, no exchange of any kind for those cakes.

And while I'm not a lawyer, I am thinking that the old "you must make the Deco-Pac cake exactly as it is shown in the photo" trope may also be a Contract of Adhesion, and may not hold much water. When you buy something that comes with a built-in contract like that, you didn't sign anything, you didn't bargain for anything, you just bought the item. Conditions can't be imposed on how you use it. You bought it!

I really like Tabberone's site. She's not a lawyer either, but has a lot of experience with this stuff, and is good at putting it into lay terms. http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/CopyrightLaw/Quilting/Quilting.shtml

What if you go to a website such as nickjr and demonstrate how to make dora cupcakes. do you still need to get the permission?

The University pans are officially licensed and have no restrictions. You can get them for all of the big schools.

Well I think your advice is not legally sound, but I didn't wake up this morning thinking I would spend my day beating my head against a wall, so I'll bow out.

Bottom line, guys: Don't sell copyrighted or trademarked cakes without obtaining written permission from the owner.