Using coin images / copyright etc

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Pam, you helped clarify the area, some, we can’t use official symbols of the Mint, we have to draw the line there. But guys, get off this, this is really starting to look silly, nobody from the Tunisia Mint Secret Service is going to hunt this OP down for this.

 

Very true. And yes someone is always watching. And sadly, even some, I say some tshirt places, the ole mighty $! But all have a choice and yes I agree, get off this. Thank you bunches!

 

Irrelevant with respect to a Tunisian coin, but this discusses copyright disposition of US designs, coins, and photos of coins quite thoroughly:

Commons: Determining if U.S. coins are free to use - Wikimedia Commons

 

I think OP was also interested in "universal guidance", applicable to any coin he may manipulate for arts sake. I highlighted (a la Insider-style) the passages that make me think that.

 

Thanks everyone! A lot of really helpful info from you all. Although it does look like a very complex area, and yes, I don't have a specific interest in Tunisia, that was just one of the images I'd made I particularly liked - I have done some from various other countries. Whether enough to avoid problems is hard to say. And yes, I wasn't sure with that original Tunisian coin, who might have a claim over the design - whether the government of Tunisia, or the Paris mint, and I guess in some cases, depending on the contract between the two, it could go either way.

I've started a site researching information on coins I collect. For instance in researching that Tunisian coin, I learnt about Arabic Calligraphy - the blue pattern above the crescent in my image above - where every reference site I can find simply calls that "a design" - it's actually the ruler's name written very artistically - and I just thought I'd have a bit of fun with some of the photos I took of my coins. But it seems it might be too ambiguous legally, so I guess I'll just spend that time researching more coins instead

 

For comparison, do you have the ruler's name written normally?

 

I realize that you can't appreciate the efforts that go into a product, as I can, having been the designer of very complicated first generation equipment for an international ~90000 employee companies' products.

I designed/built/installed high-speed automated first-generation equipment for a very complicated product that our competitors produced manually at a speed less than 20% of our new multi-million facility/operation.

An executive mandated that an opening in the product be changed from a critical curve which could be virtually any shape, to a two straight lines at a V-shape design, as a competitive product.

Our product became the market leader for several years, at a competitive price, until I received a court order to deliver all of my personal notes about that new more practical design.

The courts subsequently awarded all production equipment, and the funds received for sales of our product, to our competitor with 2 V-shaped lines.

Copy-rights don't need to be documented, if a critical simple design element of an already produced product, is copied.

A simple answer to a complicated inter-national process!!

JMHO

 

The coin it was from is the Tunisia 1950 - 1957 100 Francs. The ruler was Muhammad VIII al-Amin (Arabic: محمد الثامن الأمين; 4 commonly known as Lamine Bey (Arabic: الأمين باي) (From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_VIII_al-Amin). I must confess, I can't read it myself, but then I can't make out most of the German on Notgeld notes either

 

I think the one thing this thread has demonstrated is that there is no simple answer what I initially thought might be a simple question - just as you never thought you were in breach of copyright with your design until you got to court. I'm not sure if my question would be simpler (or perhaps just a clearer "no") if I was wanting a design to use of a coin myself and looking to borrow from other mints.

In any case, I'm disappointed that copyright does have the effect of stifling something which was never going to be a commercial threat to the original creators (even if I sold millions of t-shirts with my derivative designs, it's not like that's a market which would have otherwise been served by the mints). But I'd rather know now that it's too risky an area, than after setting up some big commercial operation on it (I wasn't in any case)

 

Don't upload any images to the internet that you don't want to get shanghaied or stolen (stollen? That's bread)........if one is so worried one shouldn't do that. Frankly, I don't see what the hub, bub is all about.

 

You sell millions of t-shirts they might figure out a way.

 

If I use my imagination, I can see some of it in the design. I wonder if it's common to wind the text in multiple directions to get the design to come out nice. Much easier to read German fraktur on Notgeld.

 

True - and honestly, I probably wouldn't even come to their attention, or be worth chasing, until I started making a fair bit of money off something. But I'd rather do the right thing from the outset.

 

Well but then what does that tell you? It should tell you, there's no "right answer." When you get down to cases, there's never a right answer, just lawyers.