I found a couple copyright violations for my Flexigrid model and submitted copyright violations for them. They admitted to copying it in the description and/or the title of the model. They also used the Flexigrid name. Looking at how the models were constructed made it clear to me they were copies in addition to them admitting they were copies and using the same name (“Flexigrid”). Even with all of that, the copyright claims were rejected for all three. Anyone have successful steps for making a copyright violation case?
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Can you supply a link to your design you are saying they copied? I can’t find yours, only the one you made a claim against.
It’s been ripped off numerous times, including by some featured designers:
https://makerworld.com/en/collections/1776677
Those ones at least don’t use the Flexigrid name.
The ones I cited as being ripped off, actually copied my model files and were not developed independently.
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I still can’t find it even looking through those models.
What exactly is the basis of the copyright claim? I don’t see it.
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Maybe I’m wrong, but I too can’t figure out where the complaint is.Maybe the technique, but the models seem different to me. Can you provide a link to the models you have complained about? In order to better understand
What @Zammer3D meant were models with similar mechanics I presume, which is still a copyright. Even if you completely paint a remake of a painting by hand, it still violates copyright. Problem is that as far as I can see the topic starter wasn’t the first to upload a similar mechanic either.
But what @jetpad means I believe it’s that the models he pointed out didn’t “copy” the idea but used his exact files as a basis for their models, which is a remix and prohibited by the license and thus also copyright/theft (presuming the models weren’t previously uploaded with a CC license)
But to get to the point, convincing MakerWorld that a remix violates copyright is extremely hard. Only a 1:1 reupload is an easy copyright strike. I have had success with copyright striking by overlaying models in the slicer to show that parts of the model are exactly the same.
I believe you uploaded openscad files to MakerWorld? This makes it really easy for others to adapt the design in a way that creates a completely new geometry and might make it very hard to prove they are remixes/stolen. Why did you upload source files? Or were they previously listed with another license?
I think you are confusing patents and copyrights. In the US copyright law doesn’t protect mechanics and mechanisms.
What probably happened is he submitted a case along the lines outlined in this post here. Given only that information it was correctly rejected. He needs to demonstrate that a suspect model is actually a derivative of one of his, using your overlay technique for example.
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I didn’t mean anything. I figured the Flexigrid name and the fact that they were likely made with the generator would lead to those models being the originals. I’m not saying anything about whether or not the copyright claims are valid. Just linking the models.
“Showed” would have been a better word in that case?
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The original model Flexigrid Fidget Toy by jetpad - MakerWorld is written in OpenSCAD and allows you to create models that can have a wide variety of shapes and sizes. You can also take the STL files that it creates and color them in the slicer. The license for the Flexigrid model allows you to use it to generate models for you to use personally but doesn’t allow you repost derivatives or remixes. The problem is those users have used the OpenSCAD script to generate STLs and then reposted those models as their own.
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It is unfortunately very easy to purposely or inadvertently do things that break the license of someone else’s work in cases where files are generated from OpenSCAD. I don’t think the overlay technique would work for me unless I knew the parameters they used to generate the STL files from my OpenSCAD code.
You could add a watermark to the generated geometry. Just make it tiny and call it something like adjust_overlap_spacing() in the code.