Well, of course fewer people would have bought it. I don't think -- just my opinion -- she would contest that the designs were aimed at Firefly/Serenity fans. However, people on this very website wrote in a book called "Finding Serenity". Should Universal retroactively invoice those folk?

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Invoice them for what?

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Writing about works owned by Universal without a license to do so, and profiting from it.

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Writing about your own personal experience about the work and writing a work in that universe with those characters are different things.

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Well, of course fewer people would have bought it. I don't think -- just my opinion -- she would contest that the designs were aimed at Firefly/Serenity fans. However, people on this very website wrote in a book called "Finding Serenity". Should Universal retroactively invoice those folk?

I think the book is a well established Fair Use. It's legal to refer to and/or use portions of copyrighted materials for criticism and commentary. Besides, nobody is going to confuse a book about themes in Firefly with the product the studio was selling. Whereas consumers might well confuse fan made for-fan-profit T-shirts "inspired" by a film, with any T-shirts Universal (et al) might choose to license.

Here's some summarized information on fair use/not fair use as pertains to visual arts: [link] See the "Not a fair use" paragraph on the church quilt poster.

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Yes, but Universal and FOX have sold licenses to Titan -- exclusive ones -- for delivering works pertaining to the development of the show and movie.

ETA - this post was written earlier..

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I've profited off the sale of Save Firefly as part of a collection of my work. Fair use, falls under commentary.

There's no yes but about it.

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Yes, but..

There are some examples of unfair use of unauthorised books about TV shows. The publishers of a Twin Peaks guide were sued, for example.

You could argue that "Finding Serenity" makes substanial references to characters and moments in Firefly, which would effect sales of an official reference book (which now exists). That was the argument used with the Twin Peaks book. Successfully. This argument has also been used on other TV projects, successfully.

The equivalent Universal or FOX situation in this case would be to send the publishers a letter demanding licensing payment, since Titan holds those rights . It would be based on very questionable legal grounds, though. Although it wouldn't be the first time that kind of thing has happened.

When "Finding Serenity" was published, they didn't put 'Unauthorised' on it.

Old Finding Serenity cover: [link]

As of very recently, they put a new cover on it: [link]

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Okay, so what difference does it make, legally, that the work now states that it is unauthorized? 11th Hour wouldn't be in any less trouble if she had added "unauthorized" to her designs. (I presume.)

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It's commonly done on books, especially in the titles nowadays, to try to avoid the licensed work issue. [link]

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