On Jan 28, 4:06 am, Mariux <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello, > > is there some sort of prohibition to use official Android icons in > paid apps? > > > The Android SDK Terms of use reports this: > > "3.3 Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, > you may not copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, > redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create > derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK. Except to the > extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not load > any part of the SDK onto a mobile handset or any other hardware device > except a personal computer, combine any part of the SDK with other > software, or distribute any software or device incorporating a part of > the SDK."
That part of the license is mostly concerned with people taking some of the non-open source code included with the SDK (like the Google APIs for Maps, etc) and trying to decompile them, or extract them to load on a device. It does technically forbid using the icons included therein, but that was not the intent. If you want to be excessively cautious though, simply find the icon you want on http://android.git.kernel.org/ and use that copy. (But see below). > "3.6 Nothing in this License Agreement gives you a right to use any of > Google's trade names, trademarks, service marks, logos, domain names, > or other distinctive brand features." > > Icons should be considered "part of the SDK" or "distinctive brand > features"? That says that the SDK license agreement does not give you any rights for things like the Android trakemark, the Google logo, the android.com domain name, etc. Basically it gives you no rights to anything that you might use to make your app look official. However, you have the right under law to use trademarks, logos, domain names, etc in certain circumstances. For example, you are legally allow to say "I own an Android powered phone", or "The official Android website is at android.com". You also have some rights to some things via other documents. For example, http://www.android.com/branding.html gives you the right to use the Green Android logo under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license. Depending on the specific icon you want to use, you might not be permitted to use it in certain contexts. For example, you would not be permitted to use the GTalk icon as the Icon for your app, but it would be allowable to use it on a button that launches the GTalk app, as long as the way you use it does not create a false impression of your app having some official relationship to GTalk, or imply that your app is made by Google, etc. I hope this answers your questions. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
