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If you have to pay royalties, they won't be to the bar; they'll be to the bar's architect. Copyright law generally only covers expressive, rather than functional, aspects of a copyrighted work, so things like doors and walls might be okay, but architectural design is recognized as copyrightable.

In general I strongly recommend avoiding the term "intellectual property" because it conflates several different areas of law with almost totally unrelated traditions, statutes, and (in common-law countries) precedents — copyrights, patents, design patents, mask works, trademarks, trade secrets, and most alarmingly, in the EU, database rights. (Moreover, it's an extremely loaded term, like "pro-life" and "pro-choice".)




That's why I chose the term "intellectual property": it's a useful term for the issues around "creating a thing that's somewhat like another thing," even if it's not a super helpful legal term.

I would not be surprised to see someone argue for a new class of property rights for owners, surrounding the reproduction of a scene or location where the reproduction has commercial value. What happens if Facebook bootlegs the Mall of America for Oculus? Does that lower the value of a similar venture by the mall's owners?




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