Q: Are closed species real?
Hey! The internet is sort of in a bind right now due to the "Primagen" situation, and the people need answers.
Can an artist charge people for the right to make a fanart of their fictional species? Like they make a concept and certain criteria and guidelines. If someone's artwork fits those criteria, it will be considered that closed species.
Now, the important question. Can the species' author to charge the other artist money for making an original character? (e.g. "Primagen OC")? The general price for a "Primagen" character is upwards of 600-1200$ EACH. Is there an actual way for the author to make the artist pay, apart from empty death threats and mass-downvoting on sites like Reddit or DeviantArt? And if one actually gets accused of such a thing (generally claimed to be "art theft"), how do they defend themselves?
A:
You raise a ton of issues here, but I'll address a couple. Copyright protection attaches to the creation of new characters and in some cases new "races" or "species," but generally does not protect common well-known elements (aka scene-a-faire doctrine in copyright law).
So if someone creates a brand new species of characters, they could gain protection over its novel elements as well as its *collection* of common elements.
In order to get into the specifics, an IP/copyright lawyer would need to do a 1:1 comparison over the original work and the allegedly infringing work. Feel free to reach out with any further questions.
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