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My father creates antique signs made from old advertisements. He carves them out of wood and gives them as gifts. He’d like to start selling them on the internet but we need to know more about copyright laws. Many of the signs he has made are of companies that are no longer in business, but he would like to look into using some old Coca-Cola or John Deere ads.

From my knowledge, there might be some problems with the companies that are still in business, but not the older companies that are no longer around. Is that correct?

He has also bought tin signs in stores and attached them to wood and made them look more antique. Can he resell those since he legally bought them?

Thanks for your help!
He normally gets the images that he uses out of old clip art books that he used to use when he designed newspaper advertisements. He thinks that because he was able to legally use the images for newspaper ads, that he shouldn’t have any problems with creating a unique type of advertisment on wood. If his assumption is true, then if he uses a old illustration or photo of a Ford Model T on a sign, would he be able to use the Ford logo or even the Ford name not in it’s logo format? That is where I feel it gets tricky…

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