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Selling Virtual Versions of Design Classics: Is This Even Legal?

By Rain Noe - May 29, 2013

in Design Business | Furniture Design

Black market?

Black market?

A European company called 3D Furniture sells design classics of yore: Work from the Eameses, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and everything you'd see in a History of ID class. They also sell modern-day stuff designed by Starck, Rashid, Arad, et. al. But as you've probably gathered from the company's name, none of the stuff is real; it's all 3D models meant for architects to drop into renderings.

The company's choppy description reveals English as a second language:

3d-furniture started in 2010 with vision to bring refreshment on the design marketplace. It is made by architect, with great experience and interest in 3d modeling and 3D visualization. 3D furniture has internationally based team, currently located in two cities: Cologne, Germany and Belgrade, Serbia.

Crucial aim is to provide full range of furniture for different type of users, architects, designers and all the others interested in 3d modeling and visualization. Idea was to serve clients models they cannot easily find on web. In our growing library you can find rare, high quality 3d models of famous furniture pieces for fair price. List of models is pretty specific. You can find there models of famous timeless pieces, but also models of famous brands and manufacturers, currently in trend in field of interior design. Because of that, collection of 3d models is growing larger each day.

From a moral standpoint, the company is seemingly providing a useful service to architects and designers trying to show their clients what a particular space could look like, and you could argue that inclusion of a particular piece in a rendering could lead the client to purchase the real deal. But is it legal? They are, after all, profiting off of the designs of others, selling the models for roughly US $8 to $15 a pop.

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LL

11 years ago

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Why only talk about chairs? every place that sells 3d objects have aircrafts, cars, furniture appliances etc.
Like some said above a photographer needs to pay to everything branded he photographs?

Most of this things are illegal or legal for only one reason: can the creator/etc get money or not?
So this issues only happen in million business like for example: games.
Because there is a big pot of money there in a central place.
So the legal and administrative resources to get money is not as big as tracking thousands of people.

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AM

11 years ago

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No one should ever be locked in a cage for purchasing or selling a copy of a digital file, regardless of what that file contains.
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DJ

11 years ago

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The actual chairs exist, and have protection for the form and function only. Duplication of the form (specific shape) and function (chair. for sitting on), in a specific combination - is illegal.

The 3D model's form is a packet of data, and it's function is to make images.

In the future, designers will protect their "3 dimensional copyrights", but currently the laws shouldn't stop the creation of something that otherwise would not exist.

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Jason

11 years ago

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A Little off topic but along the same vein...Is the artwork found in a patent application protected, or could it be published in a magazine?
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David

11 years ago

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I believe you are actually paying for the time consumed in making the model, and not the model itself.

I think Austin gave has a point with the Ferrari example. You can't expect to put to jail every single guy who decides to sell a designer's model. Maybe the 3D object could be considered as an interpretation of the real one. Would it be a crime to sell that?
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Roly

11 years ago

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I recall there being a fuss a while back about people selling virtual Ferrari's and Landrovers in secondlife - the trademark holders had to sue, due to trademarks having a "use it or lose it" , "protect it or lose it" qualifiers.
Not 100% sure how it applies to copyright, but believe they'd be in breach due to the fact they're profiting from someone elses design.

Blurb on the second life Trademark discussion here: https://www.fenwick.com/FenwickDocuments/2010-03-17_Is_There_A_Second_Life.pdf
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Andrew

11 years ago

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Craig, I find it hard to believe what you are saying. So various furniture companies around the world release high quality CAD data to 3rd parties for free so they can texture the models and sell for a profit? This just is not true. I know some manufacturers have lowish quality models available for specccing/arch purposes and may be used as a reference to model over.

I also think you have it wrong when you state you are paying for their expertise in lighting. Surely that is up to the end user of the model, what scene it is being placed in etc...
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Austin

11 years ago

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I wonder. For example, in video games, the creators have to get licences and approvals to, for example, have a Ferrari in a racing game.

How is this different? Maybe it is?
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craig

11 years ago

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90% of all websites selling models of classic furniture are not the original modelers. What they do is texture a model they got directly from the maker/manufacturer of the piece.

The best one in the business(IMHO) is Design connected.

I have over 2000 models of just about every classic piece of furniture made, all were gotten free from the manufacturer of the piece.

What your paying for is their expertise in the texturing/lighting department.
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IDiot

11 years ago

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Many companies offer free models of their products in different formats for the convenience of interior designers, architects and so forth as it is a tool to help the designers sell their design and then in turn it can help sell the product. Offering high quality versions of these models for profit is an interesting IP question, obviously it takes some time and work to create a high quality / detailed model, but the designs themself are often the intellectual property of someone else. However, some of the IP for many of these designs has long since expired, unless they have are trademarks or other longer term IP.

Still another question is people using these models to print 3D models of these pieces.

It's the wild west of digital media all over again, and Washington is trying to get a better handle on it than they did with MP3s for better or worse.
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Anders

11 years ago

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I hope it is legal. Or else i will be in trouble of selling an image i drawed of my ikea furnitures
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Rafael Morgan

11 years ago

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Well, good point. I have never thought about it from this perspective.

In theory, copyright covers all aspects of a design project, including the object itself, its blueprints and images. Of course, you could take a picture of a classic chair or model it yourself, but profiting from it is technically illegal.

In music, as an example, you can transcribe a song to notation for your own personal use, but selling transcription books is considered illegal.

Anyway, personally, I would not care if someone modeled my designs and sold the models online, for visualization purposes. I cannot see how it would interfere negatively in the commercialization of the real tangible thing.

On the other hand, copycats could use such models to produce real life copies, but this is something they would do anyway, with or without 3D models to guide them.
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powers

11 years ago

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$8 to $15? Wow, that's way cheaper than turbosquid.
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db

11 years ago

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Of course it is legal. They created a model of an object, not the object. It is exactly the same as a photographer. They created an image of an object, not the object.

btw, does core77 have permission to use the images of the models of the objects?
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