copyright
Reproducing game art in various forms for personal use and/or selling to friends
<p>In various nerdy gaming communities, it's common for folks to produce higher quality tokens, play mats, and such containing artwork from the games. And some people will sell some of their works to basically pay for their hobby.</p>

<p>Question 1: If someone digitally copies an image and prints it on a play mat without permission that's obviously not legal for them to sell, but is it legal for personal use under Fair Use?</p>

<p>Question 2: Would it be illegal to use symbols from the game on tokens you create and sell? See links for an example of what I mean. The first link is actual card board images from the game. The second is the higher quality tokens someone produced. The reproduced drawings are ever so slightly different. What if they were identical? Does that matter? Or how different would they need to be?</p>

<p><a href="https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/7a/47/7a474142-dd1a-4eb1-8c42-1f8e1e18efe1/l5c01_rings.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/7a/47/7a474142-dd1a-4eb1-8c42-1f8e1e18efe1/l5c01_rings.png</a></p>

<p><a href="http://www.brokenegggames.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/thumbnail/960x/17f82f742ffe127f42dca9de82fb58b1/2/0/20170825_115514.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.brokenegggames.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/thumbnail/960x/17f82f742ffe127f42dca9de82fb58b1/2/0/20170825_115514.jpg</a></p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Question 1: If someone digitally copies an image and prints it on a
  play mat without permission that's obviously not legal for them to
  sell, but is it legal for personal use under Fair Use?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>This would be a close question in a fair use analysis and could come out either way.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Question 2: Would it be illegal to use symbols from the game on tokens
  you create and sell? See links for an example of what I mean. 1st link
  is actual card board images from the game. 2nd is the higher quality
  tokens someone produced. The reproduced drawings are ever so slightly
  different. What if they were identical? Does that matter? Or how
  different would they need to be?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Copyright protects not only exact copies, but "derivative works", and certainly there is no doubt that the images in the second link are derivative works of the images in the first link.</p>

<p>An alternative image that reproduces the idea represented by the first link, but not the image itself (for example, photographs of real world examples of the elements in question) would probably not be derivative works. </p>

<p>The designs would have to be very, very different not to be derivative works (e.g. the amount of difference between a realistic portrait of a person and a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism" rel="nofollow noreferrer">cubist version of the same portrait</a>), and even then it might not be an open and shut question.</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0Ofo.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0Ofo.jpg" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p><em>Pablo Picasso, 1910, Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier), oil on canvas, 100.3 x 73.6 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York (Now in the public domain).</em></p>
