Isn't this stuff all Trademarked? This is a very complex issue. When an artist creates a work of art he owns the copyright for that work - even if the work uses the names, likenesses, or concepts covered by another form of protection called trademarking. Paramount owns the trademarks to the Trek ships in terms of both the likenesses and the names, so to use the ships in any form of advertising would be inviting a full photon barrage However, using the ships in art is different, because it's an 'interpretative expression' of someone else's concept. We can't sell these images, but posting them for everyone to enjoy is very much a grey area, and even if Paramount got it into their heads to sue they'd have a hard time doing it. It's like painting a picture of a Coke bottle. If you produce one oil and hang it in a museum no one's going to say anything - first, because there's been no money involved, and second because it's an interpretive re-expression of an existing protected concept. If you sell 1000 copies of the print, however, Coca-Cola will send you a nice letter asking you for a donation to their legal fund. To make matters even move complex, there are several levels of both Trade marking and Copyrighting. For example, if you look at the box of the big Micromachines StarTrek Collectors’ Set, you’ll see little symbols beside some of the ship images and names - but not all of them. The ‘TM’ means that Paramount is claiming a Trademark for the name, for the appearance of the ship, or both. If you see a little ‘R’ in a circle,that means that the mark is REGISTERED, which means that they filed some more paperwork after claiming the mark and that if someone else uses the trade dress commercially he had better have his shields up AND the cloak engaged.... If you see a ‘C’ in a circle, or the words ‘Copyright’, it means that someone is claiming a copyright on a piece of intellectual property or on a work or art or something else original. This is the second level of copyrighting. The first level is always there, which is why the forums on Compuserve saying that they won’t accept anything copyrighted is silly, because EVERYTHING, every work of art, every work of fiction, is always copyrighted even if the artist doesn’t claim it.... Anyway, the third level of copyrighting is REGISTERED copyright. The difference is that someone takes his claimed work and sends a copy to the Patent and Trademark office and gets a registry number for the work. If someone wrongfully distributes an unclaimed copyrighted work, they can be sued, but the artist’s chances of collecting are a bit slim. If the work is claimed, then the artist will probably collect, but he’ll have to pay his own legal fees. And he can only collect actual damages, or the monetary damages suffered because someone else copied and distributed his work. If, on the other hand, someone wrongfully copies and distributes or sells a registered copyrighted work, the guilty party can be sued. And if he loses, he pays the plaintiff’s lawyer, he pays actual damages, AND HE PAYS STATUTORY DAMAGES, which are rather large and run into five figures PER infringement. Now, when Eric post's his meshes - which have quite a lot of time invested in them - I post them freely for the enjoyment of everyone because I want it to be VERY clear that I DON’T sell them. However, I post them with a restriction that they are NEVER to be used commercially, which is mostly to protect ME because I don’t want to be caught up in the fight when Paramount sees Trek ships in someone’s advertising... If I sold the starship meshes, well, I’d be profiting from material derived from someone else’s trade dress and my shields would take a hammering from the USS Paramount’s main legal batteries. HOWEVER, I took the time to register my mesh, which means I sent a diskette, a form, and $20 to Washington DC. SO... let’s say that I post my mesh with a statement saying no one else can use it commercially. I can do that because I built the mesh and I own the copyright on it. I don’t own the trademark, however, so I can’t sell the mesh. I can tell you how you can’t use it, but I can’t tell you how you can use it..... Still with me? Good.... Now, let’s say someone takes my posted mesh and uses it in a game or in advertising. This has happened, that I know of, five times. Let’s forget Paramount’s interest, which is foremost, and just consider me. Someone has infringed on my property, which I can’t sell, but which is registered copyrighted. SO... I can take them to court and collect lawyers fees and statutory damages, but I can’t collect actual damages because I could never have sold the mesh in the first place, which makes my actual damages nil, nothing, zero, ni-chev-o. So, this puts me in the interesting theoretical position THAT EVEN IF PARAMOUNT PUBLISHED A BOOK OF FAN ART AND INCLUDED MY STILLS WITHOUT MY PERMISSION I COULD SUE THEM! I couldn’t CHARGE them for the priviledge of publishing my art, but I could collect if they infringed FIRST! My only control over the art and over the meshes is the power to with hold permission and to sue once there has been an infringement.... It all gets very complicated, as you can see now, when works are DERIVATIVE upon someone else’s works. We acknowledge openly that our works are derivative, to keep things crystal clear. Everyone enjoy. In actually, no one like us would ever have the resources to do legal battle with Paramount. Nor would we want to, and we’re all very grateful they allow us poor rabid fans the outlets to our creativity they do allow us

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