Am 16.07.2014 10:12, schrieb Sönke Ludwig:
Am 15.07.2014 13:13, schrieb Alix Pexton:
I've been researching what is necessary to transfer the copyright of the
D logo to Digital Mars, which is complicated by international issues.
It seems that the term "copyright" is often aliased to the German
"Deutsches Urheberrecht" which is what we call the "moral rights of the
author" in the UK.
This is something very different from copyright as it is inalienable
from the originating creator and not something that can be transferred
other that by inheritance.
This makes me wonder if previous attempts to negotiate a new copyright
for the logo have gone unanswered because the terminology used has lost
something in translation.
Do any of our native German D users know what the right terminology for
the international concept of "copyright" is?
European copyright law is something that is currently being debated for
unification and there is no actual legislation in place so any
negotiations regarding the logo have to be conducted based on the common
ground between German and U.S. laws.
A...
As far as I know, this is the "Verwertungsrecht" (roughly the right to
distribute) and the "Nutzungsrecht" (the right to use). Both can be
granted to third parties using a proper license, or using a work contract.
I think what we need here isn't really a change of the ownership, but
rather a proper license, either a liberal public license (e.g. some CC
variant), or a personal license for Walter that grants him all rights to
use, distribute and relicense the logo.
Having said that, I'm pretty sure that he can still transfer the
"copyright" according to U.S. laws to another person. It's just that he
could then possibly still sue the person according to German laws. So a
license would probably be the best bet.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, so this is just my limited personal
understanding of the matter.
BTW, the shape of the logo itself isn't covered by either copyright, or
"Urheberrecht", AFAIK. That's what trademarks are for. So a full redo of
the logo should be unaffected by the original work. Of course it would
still be fair to properly negotiate with the original author...
