I saw this on a website that doing character cakes was an infringement of copyright laws is this true. The website said it was alright to place something on top of the cake but that doing a character cake was against copyright laws. Confused????

You can make them you just can't sell them.

If you pay for cake figures, you're also paying for the right to resell them, including on a cake. If you make the cake and either use a character pan or copy a drawing out of a coloring book, even if you freehand it, you're selling something you didn't buy the rights to. Lisa is right - you can legally give them away, but even if you exchange them for "donations" or something with monetary value you can be fined and/or put out of business.

My WMI was telling us about a friend or student, not sure which, that sold a character cake. One of the parents attending the party happened to be a patent attorney that took it upon himself to sue her.

You just never know what can happen. I did a power ranger cake once, but I'm not sure I want to do a character cake again.

What a drag, eh?