copyright intellectual-property licensing data-ownership photography
Can a self-made photo of a mass product (not containing any logos) be claimed as entirely own work?
<p>I made a photo of my keyboard. Actually, not the whole keyboard, but just small section of it. The photo neither contains any logos, nor seems to allow to determination producer/model (the photoed section looks quite typical). The purpose of photo is to illustrate location of some characters in typical keyboard layout.</p>

<p>Can I claim this photo as being <strong>entirely my work</strong>?</p>

<p><sub>When I try to upload this file into Wikipedia, it tries to ensure the material is free. It proposes to choose one of variants: entirely my work, third-party work under free license, non-free work for fair use. Can I mark it as <em>entirely my work</em>, or should I fall back to declaring it as fair use?</sub></p>

<p><sub>P.S.: I'm mostly interested about U.S., E.U. and Ukrainian laws on this case — i.e. if general answer can't be given (it differs greatly from country to country), then it should be related to at least one of these three regions.</sub></p>

<p>Wikipedia Commons has <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules_by_subject_matter#Utility_objects" rel="nofollow noreferrer">advice on that:</a></p>

<blockquote>
  <p>There is normally no copyright in a 3D utilitarian object in the United States, so photographs of typical household objects from the United States or other jurisdictions that do not extend copyright to utilitarian objects are normally acceptable (...)</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Usually the key factor in telling apart uncopyrighted utility objects from copyrighted works of art is whether the object has key features that aren't needed for the intended utility. Vehicles are common example of this: normal cars aren't copyrighted, but the Batman's or James Bond's cars are.</p>

<p>Therefore, a usual computer keyboard can't be considered copyrighted and photographs of it can be uploaded as own work.</p>

<p>Taking a look at <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Computer_keyboards" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Category:Computer keyboards</a> on Wikimedia Commons can give an idea of what is allowed and regarded as free.</p>

<p>About logos, if they are small they are just <em><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:De_minimis" rel="nofollow noreferrer">de minimis</a></em>, although a close up of the logo wouldn't be acceptable.</p>

<p>Any work of art is protected by copyright; and one man's functional object is another man's work of art. It is possible that the keyboard is thus protected. <a href="http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/sme/en/documents/pdf/ip_photography.pdf%20" rel="nofollow noreferrer">This article</a> discusses issues surrounding photography of IP. The difference between a photo of a banana and a photo of a (part of) a keyboard is that bananas aren't designed. The question is whether the work exhibits sufficient creativity – that depends on the keyboard. If it is specifically an artsy keyboard, then you would have to rely on fair use. If it's just a B flat keyboard, it is highly unlikely that there is any copyright protection to it.</p>
