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process, is critical and indispensable to the paper products’
production. But for these characters, petitioner would not be
able to sell its paper products in the form that it does.
Petitioner also does not let anyone (e.g., a printer) sell, copy,
or use any of its cartoon characters without its permission, and
anyone who does so is in breach of the license that petitioner
holds as to its characters.
Petitioner focuses on the fact that the producers actually
develop the paper products and argues therefrom that the printers
are the producers of its products. We disagree with this
argument. The printer’s reproduction of petitioner’s characters
onto ordinary paper is merely one small step in petitioner’s
process of exploiting its characters as sellable images, and the
reproduction process is mechanical in nature in that it involves
little independence on the printers’ part and is subject to
petitioner’s control, close scrutiny, and approval. Petitioner
personally selects the printers merely to reproduce the
character’s images in a specified manner onto standard sheets of
plain paper. The printers cannot print the paper products
without the cartoon images, and the finished products must
conform to petitioner’s specifications. Given the added fact
that a printer does not acquire a proprietary interest in a
cartoon drawing so that it may sell the drawing (or copy thereof)
either separately or as part of a paper product, we conclude that
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