Edible images - Page 2

Yes, dl_stump, you are correct. You will find thousands of copyright violations in a 2 minute search on the Internet, so obviously not everyone obeys, but we can only police ourselves.

You can use them if you are making a cake for a friend or family member. I believe the restriction with copyrighted images is you cannot make a profit from or publicly advertise the images.

I could be wrong though.....

If you buy Disney character edible images, from a licensed source, then you should be free to use them. On the other hand, if, in the past, you bought them from an unlicensed source (or had unlicensed images printed to order), then both you and the unlicensed source would likely be subject to civil liability and perhaps even criminal prosecution. And it's fairly obvious that if you started printing your own edible prints of Disney characters, without some sort of license agreement, you'd become an unlicensed source yourself.

 

Not quite sure what the situation would be with a customer-provided photograph, actually taken by the customer, of a family member with a Disney character, in a Disney theme park. I think you'd have to talk about an intellectual property lawyer about that situation.

Only for personal use. It is still protected by copyright laws which prohibit you reselling the images.

Those are typically deco-PAC and are made specifically for resale.

That is specifically what I was referring to. I've never heard of anybody selling unmounted edible images of licensed properties on any other basis. Older sorts of decorations featuring licensed properties, yes, the grocers' shelves have been full of them for decades, but unmounted edible images? That would be a new one on me. Then again, the place I go for such things caters mainly to professionals, and so presumably every licensed consumable they stock is licensed for resale.

Either that or the store is infringing. Just because you see a business selling a product doesn't mean it's legal.

If you do not duplicate the image (e.g. sell the original licensed image as part of the cake) you do not need permission since the first sale doctrine protects your right to resell (but not your right to duplicate).

That is an interesting one. My take is that you would still need permission to duplicate the likeness of the Disney character, otherwise it would be trivial to effectively acquire duplication rights to any item protected by copyright simply by taking a picture of it and duplicating the picture.

I'm not a lawyer and the preceding is not legal advice.

How much does a Printer of this kind cost I would love to purchase one.

I use the (free) photo editor from kopycake.   You can add text...do some simple things.  It allows you to make a collage.   It's free...check it out.    

I'm still curious about this assertion from "DeliciousDesserts":

Edible printing is still rather a new technology. Roughly a quarter century ago, as I recall, it didn't exist, and perhaps as recently as a decade ago, one manufacturer still had a monopoly on it, and didn't make it available to all professional bakers, much less to amateurs, and those bakers who had it were not generally inclined to outsource edible prints to others. And it is only in the past year that I've noticed any sort of mass-produced pre-printed "edible clip-art" on the shelves at Michael's.

 

While mounting an edible print on a cake is hardly rocket science, and is a good deal easier than a lot of the things I've done with a piping bag, it's still quite a bit trickier than mounting those old-style grocery-store-grade decorations, the ones made out of some kind of stiff candy, that you release for use by soaking the backing paper with a wet sponge (is there a generic term for those things?)

 

My general impression is that even when mass-produced edible images of licensed properties are available in stores catering to hobbyists (and I can't remember ever seeing them on a grocer's shelves), the main target market is professional bakers, to be mounted on cakes for sale.

 

Is there really such a thing as mass-produced licensed-character "edible clip-art" that's licensed "for personal use only"?