"Gunnar Wolf" <gw...@gwolf.org> wrote in message news:20091125220338.gb24...@gwolf.org...
Mike Hommey dijo [Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 10:30:58AM +0100]:
More than the trademark fair use problem, there is one of a license one:
Are these logo really free ? (keep in mind that for example, the Firefox
logo is not, whatever the trademark status is)

Depends on its source. If I were to draw a
very-similar-but-not-identical Firefox logo, its copyright would be
mine, but I would be breaching their trademark.

The other part of this is that if if you are trying to recreate the original logo, while not directly copying it, the result could still be a derivative work, especially if you are reffering to the original during the creation.

Paining replicators (people who attempt to recreate a painting, as closely as possible, but without try to pass the new copy of as the original (so they are not forgers)) are an example of an area where this concept often bites people. Even If I own the only authentic copy of a painting in the world, if the painting is recent enough to still be protected under copyright law, then I cannot have my painting replicated without permission from the copyright holder (which my be me if i am the artist, comissioned the work, or purchased/inherietd the rights to the work), since any such replica would be either a derivitve work under copyright law (should there be sufficent creativity), or be a considered an unauthorized copy under copyright law.


Now I looka at the other extreme. In theory, with copyright if you independently create a work that happens to be absolutely identical (say letter by letter or pixel by pixel), without even knowing about the other work, then the result is two works each with a seperate copyright that just happen to be indistinguishable. Of course that is scholarly theory, and the law in the real world is ill equiped to handle such a possibility.

(I speak loosly above, talking about a work having a copyright. I obviously mean that the authors or some other rights holder (such as in the case of a work for hire) being granted a limited monopoly on repdoucing the work, among other things.)

For the record, IANAL, IANADD.



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