Making your own dice molds: the legal stuff
So, I know lately I’ve seen a bunch of people trying their hand at casting their own resin dice, which is super exciting! I’ve seen some beautiful, beautiful designs lately. But what about the legal angle of casting your mold from another company’s dice? Lemmie of Lucky Hand Dice, who’s done her research on this one, has this to say:
“If you are making dice for yourself. It's totally fine. You bought the dice. You made the molds. You can make it and you can keep it.
If you are making dice to sell, this is where it gets fancy. So no company can trademark or copyright a simple geometric shape. Keyword here is simple. So the shape of dice (blank) is free game to copy and distribute. THE AREA WHERE YOU CAN GET IN TROUBLE IS, pay attention here kiddos, is copying the font. The font/typeface falls under copyright/trademark protection. While some fonts are more ambiguous than others, if you copy and sell dice with a font you did not make or purchase the rights to, the original company can sue you for copyright infringement. So if you want absolute peace of mind that you won't get into trouble, don't sell dice with someone else's mold and don't buy molds that you don't know if the seller has the typeface rights to.
Now what about if I just make dice and give it to people for free/in exchange for something non monetary? You can still get into trouble for trademark infringement. How? By either ruining their reputation or not being on brand. Ruining their reputation is by making a product that isn't up to their standards and deters away new customers because it's still recognizable as their product. The other way by not being on brand is that if a company only makes metal dice and you use their dice to make resin/non metal dice, it's not on brand with that company and you can get into trouble that way. Or if a company only makes opaque dice and you make translucent dice. You can only get in trouble this way if the company gets a hold of your dice, or if the person you gave it to takes pictures and posts it on the internet and the company finds it.
So if you plan on making and selling/distribute dice, you need to own the rights to the typeface you want to use for complete peace of mind.”
