[Clipart] PD license

[Francis Bond]

G'day,

2009/4/12 chovynz <chovynz at gmail.com>:
> I've been thinking about some things, and something keeps coming back to me.
> If I upload something with PD license, there is actually nothing stopping
> people or a business from taking that clipart, copyrighting it then suing me
> for using my own clipart on my own website/book/CD
> cover/tshirt/artwork/publicly available and viewed material.

As far as I understand the law, only the creator of a work gets
copyright.  They can assign it to someone else, but you cannot
copyright something someone else has made.   You can copyright
something based on a public domain work if you have changed it in some
way (and how much you need to change it is debatable), but that
doesn't affect the original image at all, so you cannot be sued for
using it.

But, I am not a lawyer (^_^).

-- 
Francis Bond <http://www2.nict.go.jp/x/x161/en/member/bond/>
NICT Language Infrastructure Group