tulsaboy wrote:
Small point to debate with you, Shay...
While I will quickly concede that much of the nose art on WWII aircraft was painted by military personnel on U.S. military aircraft, such a situation does not necessarily dictate that the artist lost any/all copyright in the creation. My understanding is that if an employee of the U.S. government, as part of their job or in the normal course of their job creates a logo, design or other work of art, that piece is property of the U.S. government and comes into the public domain. In WWII, however, few of the artists (any?) were hired by the military to be nose art painters. Many crews got local civilian artists to paint the nose art or hired a squadron member to paint the nose art on his free time. In such situations, though on government property, the copyright on the art itself would not be the property of the U.S. government and thus not in the public domain. When professional artists are hired to create a piece of art for a new government building, monument etc. their contract will have very specific language that will dictate who retains the copyright in the work. As none (that I know of) of the nose artists had contracts with the government that dictated such terms, the assumption would remain that the artist retained the copyright for his/herself.
At the end of the day, however, all of this remains mostly an academic exercise. I agree with K5083 that there is a theoretical interest in the copyright that might be held by Vargas' heirs for noseart inspired/copied from one of his original works, but again the issue is probably academic. With the Belle, anyone can create an original work of art that depicts the Belle in combat, on war tour, in Memphis, at Dayton etc. Such use of the Belle and its nose art is "fair use." What you can't do, however, is put the Belle's nose art on a coffee mug and sell it at the next airshow.
kevin
Very interesting points Kevin.
But i'm still of the opinion that those artist, if it were put to case for arguing in court, would have waved any right to the art the moment the brush touched the aluminum.
I hope it never comes down to someone suing to make things harder on artist with regard to nose art, just because someone wants money.
Mike has already stated that he wanted to do pin-up in comic book fashion, which be his own creations. So the copyright issue is a moot point. They're only inspired by.
Ho hum .......I still kinda wish they put the "Frosty" Pin-up on Glacier Girl that they had originally planned. Gotta picture of her back during the first parts of the restoration.
Shay
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