Any copyright lawyers on the board? Or lawyers in general?

[toobfreak]

You better hope you are not being taken by one of the many chinese companies out there, in this case posing as Japanese, who will make you promises then steal your intellectual property and run with it, leaving you with no real way of retaliating. They are masters at the rip off.

 

[HaShev]

I am trying to hire an artist to create two epoxy images with his custom ocean images and he keeps declining my request on copyright laws.
I have supplied 2 images.
One is an official image and the other is an image that already has custom work done that altered it.

Can I not take an image from any source and have it incorporated into a piece of art for my personal consumption?

The design image concept, if not TRADEMARKED, is up for use as long as you don't directly use their actual finished product I.e. hand drawing, computer pixels directly from their labor.
Copyright is not the same as trademark, and sometimes people bluff having it filed in the Library of congress, however that copyright if legit and has paperwork, dates who used it first in case of such dispute, especially if neither party takes out a trademark.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Japan's copyright laws are much stricter than here.
Basically any image/art that is done in an artistic way is automatically copyrighted without registering it.
So no, a Japanese artist is not going to reproduce any such image.