2 points
OTOH, if there’s nothing deeper behind the painting, then it’s just unlicensed merch. EG, Disney has come down on day care centers for using their IP.
I’m not sure if it affects your larger point, but I suspect the problem with day care centers is not that they’re copying a specific work, but that they’re using characters that Disney owns.
1 point
1 point
True, I chose a very bad example there and muddied the waters.
Normally, trademarks aren’t so bad, relatively speaking. As long as there’s no confusion about who is responsible for the product, and there’s no defamation, you should be able to use those pretty freely. When “trademark dilution” comes into play, it can get onerous, though.
