User:Donald Trung/Coin rubbings copyright question

This page 📃 serves as a draft to post a question to the village pump.

Are 2D rubbings of coins copyrighted

The author of this file (Eduardo Toda y Güell) published this in Shanghai in the year 1882 and later died in the year 1941, because of this this file is now in the public domain.

As far as I can tell copyright © exists to protect works that are creative enough to not be considered derivative works or only simple geometrical shapes.

Coin rubbings are an odd question, at the top image the author of this file (Eduardo Toda y Güell) published it in the treaty port city of Shanghai in the year 1882 and later died in the year 1941, because of this this file is now in the public domain. But there is more to that, first (1st) of all this image is clearly a creative work of a Đinh Dynasty cash coin which had existed in the years 968–980. Second of all even if it were a more recent cash coin (the last ones circulated until the 1940's) the design of these coins are only simple geometric shapes and Traditional Chinese characters, I honestly wonder how creative the original Vietnamese design by itself is. Of course, in Mainland China (the People's Republic of China) Chinese calligraphy can be copyrighted if a letter is written in a creative enough manner, so this is a separate question.

But the main question is, are 2D derivative works of 3D objects (like coins) their own new copyright or not? If someone would draw the design of a copyrighted Euro coin would this be considered a derivative work? And if it is a derivative work, would that mean that if the original design enters the public domain that all derived works would also enter the public domain if they don't sufficiently add any creative differences?

Additional remarks

Of course, this does not include photographs of coins, as coins are 3D objects, just the question if a 2D design of a 3D object creates new copyright ©.

• Of course, this does not include photographs of coins, as coins are 3D objects, just the question if a 2D design of a 3D object creates new copyright ©.

• With parodies two (2) copyrights exist, one for the original work and one for the parody, the original artist has no control over the parody, but can block its distribution because they still hold the original copyright ©.

• "Commons:Derivative works" states "In summary: you cannot trace someone else's copyrighted creative drawing and upload that tracing to Commons under a new, free license because a tracing is a copy without new creative content; likewise, you cannot make a movie version of a book you just read without the permission of the author, even if you added substantial creative new material to the storyline, because the movie requires the original book author's permission— if such permission were obtained, however, the movie would likely then be considered a derivative work entitled to its own novel copyright protection. "Derivative", in this sense, does not simply mean "derived from", it means, "derived from and including new creative content which is entitled to a new copyright."" which does support my hypothesis that indeed 2 (two) copyrights exists in the case of cash coin rubbings.

• If these images are found to be ineligible for copyright © due to a lack of creative input, then this would open up millions of images to be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.