Just came across this website and wondered what other people would think of it:
http://puppetrentals.com/puppetrentals.com/welcome.html

It's kind of a grey area: it's clear they're trying to avoid copyright issues, and yet also clear that they're trading on the known characters. There's no info on the page as to whether or not they're licensed in any way...

I've not seen anyone else offer rental Avenue Q puppets, and I'd add the site to my article on Avenue Q replicas (on www.schoolofpuppetry.com.au) if it was legit. Anyone know anything about it?

Never heard of it. Since Avenue Q has now been released for use by others I think maybe this would be fine. If you compare the puppets to the originals you can see that they are not actually duplicates of the original characters. I don't see that this is any different then what Swazzel is doing renting Audry to people doing "Little Shop of Horrors".

No one thinks anything of all the Costume Rental houses that rent costumes to do shows. In fact one of them I work with here in Kansas City has show packages that never get rented to the general public but only to theaters doing the show. They even have their own version of Disneys "Bueaty and The Beast" and it is all up front and legit.

I think it is a great idea since there seems to be a whole bunch of theaters wanting to do this that just won't have the resources to build or purchase puppets for the production.

P.S. I emailed Russ to see if he had any thoughts on this. Maybe hell join and chime in or email me back with a comment.

I found this place that rents Avenue Puppets as well

http://www.mtishowspace.com/photo-albums/317932/avenue-q-puppets-to-rent-from-mti

I didn't realize that Rick Lyon built the puppets for Avenue Q production.

http://lyonpuppets.com

MTI is the company that licences the show - at least it is here. I would assume that it's ok for them to have the puppets available to rent, since they would be the ones licensing the music/script anyway. They would more than likely also licence the puppet designs - as they have done here for a couple of amateur shows. (Adelaide Puppets may know, she made some for a local show)

I agree that it doesn't seem to be a bad thing, since it's not replicating the original designs; and yet it's one of those things that if you don't know about the legalities, you'd assume it's ok to do it. (A lot of people on Yahoo Answers for instance wouldn't know the difference between "looks like Avenue Q" and "replicates Avenue Q")

It just raised some questions for me since I knew that the website wasn't related to Rick Lyon, and wondered what the legalities would be.

Shawn brings up a good point which is that costume hire places would use similar designs to well-known productions. Do those places have to obtain licencing?

Hope Russell responds. Not trying to get anyone in trouble or anything, I was just curious as to the greyness of rights and if it's all legit then I'm more than happy to add him to my article as someone who rents Avenue Q puppets; I get about a hundred hits a day to my site for that article alone and I know it's a popular question for theatre people.

This is all very interesting.  In my opinion, it looks legit, at least on the surface, because they aren't total duplicates of the originals.  You're right with the costuming companies as well. Here in New York, you can even rent an entire original Broadway set of costumes or set for your production.  Who owns them all just depends on the designers' initial contracts with the producers, etc.

Copyright in the art world is a very slippery slope.  In theatre, it is very difficult to copyright your design since art is such an abstract concept.  As they say, "there are no original ideas," so who is to say two people can't independently come up with two very similar concepts?  Now, is that always the case?  I certainly don't think so.  People copy because that's the easy way out.  Then they change a little here and there so they don't get in trouble. 

And then once you cross an ocean, it's even messier.  There have been complete copies of Broadway productions overseas...scenery, costumes, lights, choreography, blocking, etc... that have no offiliation with the original licensing, but since it's in a different country, there's not much we can do over here.

Whew--I'm off my soap box for the moment.  As a designer, I get touchy when it comes to this topic!

I feel like I need to add that the cases of people copying shows overseas are rare and few and far between.  There ARE legit, offical licensed versions of current Broadway shows running all over the world.  Don't think that just because your production of "X" musical, that looks just like the Broadway version is a fake.  Chances are, it the real deal!

Costume rental places don't have to obtain licensing for such packages as a rule.  What they can not do is say rent or sales copyrighted characters or designs. In other words if they built a duplicate of a certain mouse we all know and called it Mickey they would be in big trouble but they can and do rent out mouse costumes.  Now that is a bit of a grey area but they all do it. Remember though that scripts for theater shows are a whole different ball game as a rule.  The characters themselves are not owned by the puppeteers that made the original puppets for Avenue Q.

Over at the MTI site they have a forum and this thread actually has a reply by one of the MTI personal and they don't mention anything about not being able to use another persons puppets for the show. I would think they would have said something about the other puppet builders that mentioned in that post that they could supply or build puppets.

Hmm.... MTI also has Audry II puppets for rent. http://www.mtishows.com/content.asp?id=6_3_0_5

Shawn,

You are correct regarding the "mouse" situation. We rented a handful of costumes years ago for a benefit, and were told we could only advertise an appearance by "The World's favorite Purple Dinosaur". It didn't matter much, everyone knew who was going to be there...

I believe that the following place hires or previously hired out Ave Q puppets in Australia and Asia...so I don't know if this is any help to you
http://www.powerarts.com.au.
They used to be called Arts Asia Pacific so I am not sure why the name change and I am in no way recommending the company, only because I know nothing about them..
We previously made some Ave Q puppets for Matt Byrne Media who had the license to put on the show and make the puppets.