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Tom Edwards | Episode 459
Tom Edwards took his first ceramics class at Mira Costa High School when he was fifteen years old. While pursuing a B.A. degree in Art History at UC Santa Barbara, Tom took two years of studio art classes in ceramics and sculpture. By 1983, Tom had a relatively successful line of pottery which he sold mainly through retail craft fairs. It was at this time that he came up with the idea of Wally. The next year Tom moved to Los Angeles where he built a small studio in his sister’s garage. He dropped his previous line of pottery and he began decorating all of his pots with cartoon imagery. Eventually Tom moved and set up shop in Colorado where he lives and works today. Recently Tom stood up to Tesla and Elon Musk for copyright infringement and Tom won.
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What is a copyright?
A copyright is your legal right to an image or a song or book or words. The way the copyright law is written is you create something and get it out there you actually have a copyright on it without having to file a form.
When does your work actually have the copyright?
You basically have to publish it, but what I learned in this process was I have made 3 or 4 hundred of these mugs over the last ten years and that is actually an act of publishing. So the fact that I have actually shipped out mugs, hand drawn a mug, shipped it out, that is a form of publishing. If you want to protect your copyright, you need to file the form. It costs fifty -five dollars. You can do it online.
Why go through the hassle of doing it that way?
Well, if you ever want to take somebody to court you have to have that copyright number. And you also have to have it if you want to sue for damages or that kind of thing. But for potters I don’t think it is that big of an issue. In my case with my cartoons, they do require copyright.
From what you have learned is the copyright here in the United States good in other countries?
I don’t know.
How important is it to hire lawyer who specializes in copyright laws?
Probably pretty important. It’s funny, a friend a mine said, Oh, now you are going to be a spokesperson for copyright laws. And your questions here make me realize, no, I am not going to be. (laughter) Paul, I have my story and that is all I know. Apparently there are a lot of artists out there, even if it looks a lot like yours and it’s a little different and they stole it, you actually can’t take them to court because they have changed it enough.
Have you raised your prices?
That is a good question. I am just about to. I should have a month ago. The overhead has kind of gone up. I used to scrounge boxes at the local natural grocer and now I had to buy boxes and you know, overhead goes up. My prices are kind of low I think, considering how much labor we put into them.
How do you charge for shipping and materials?
Well, for retail the materials are just a box and some bubble wrap and it is not that much to ship to a retail customer ( They pay the shipping.)I have a really good software that calculates the shipping almost exactly.
For my wholesale customers I charge a ten percent packing fee which I don’t think it quite covers my packing materials but I do have a really good packing system so the pots arrive without breaking and that is what is most important.
Now that you have been through all this, what do you think of Tesla?
I think they are great. I am all for them. I always thought their cars were really cool and in the end they came through and they did a good job. It is really interesting to have been this dumb little business and following this innovative business of theirs and sort of watch how the world works now. I am a little bit cynical about how all this high speed twitter and all this stuff has created a world now that is so instantaneous. It creeps me out, it’s like science fiction. But Tesla itself, they make really interesting cars and I was honored to have my artwork on their car. Interesting news, just last week they took the unicorn off the car. Isn’t that wild? It’s gone!
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Instagram: @tomedwardspottery