On 05/25/2012 10:11 AM, Dan Scott wrote:
On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 08:45:42AM -0400, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 08:22:49PM +0000, Lazar, Alexey Vladimirovich wrote:
Maybe I'm missing something, but neither GNOME nor KDE icons use that
symbol.
Dan Scott replied at 02:34 (EDT):
Yes, I think you're missing that the design of KDE's PDF icon [1] and
the Dropline Etiquette theme PDF icon [2] both appear to be derived
from Adobe's PDF icon [3],
I don't think we actually have explicit reason to believe those icons
are copyright derivative works of the Adobe icons, but they *may* be and
it's clear we'd want to investigate that question more before using
them.
Really? I can't imagine where, other than the original Adobe PDF logo
itself, both the Dropline Etiquette and KDE Oxygen icon designers would
have found the inspiration to create a red loopy "A" to represent a PDF
document. But... my imagination is pretty limited.
Tony -- who is a lawyer, BTW -- said a few posts back: "I don't think
this would qualify as fair use, because the value of this icon file is
derived from its use of Adobe's trademark."
Indeed, the primary issue that Tony raised was that of whether use of
those icons might constitute trademark infringement. Tony can speak
more to the issue of how a trademark infringement analysis works, but I
trust his opinion that we should err on the side of caution.
Right. Realistically, Evergreen is unlikely to be a primary target of a
trademark infringement action, even if Adobe starts freaking out about
trademark dilution along the lines of Penguin [1], but the reward for
taking the risk of being such a target amounts to the use of an icon.
Even at a very low risk, that seems like a very low reward...
Agreed on all counts.
BTW, Dan, as a side note, you mentioned that the GNOME icon you showed us
wasn't the canonical GNOME one, but rather a community-developed
alternative to the GNOME defaults.
Have you looked at what the default icon is in GNOME 3 for PDFs? I'd
guess that one doesn't infringe Adobe's trademark nor copyrights and we
could use that.
Yes. GNOME 3.4.0 doesn't use a specific icon for PDFs; it uses a generic
"office document" icon [2] (text flowing around a graphic on a portrait
page). This matches what I see in Fedora 16, too.
While I think your icon with just the letters PDF is probably fine (I'd
like Tony to confirm, of course), perhaps there is something out there
from another Free Software project that's prettier and doesn't have any
of these trademark issues.
I think I would dissolve into madness if putting Deja Vu Sans "PDF" on a
white background is still a problem for the project. But okay, I'm happy
to wait for word back from Tony. In the meantime, should we just remove
the PDF icon altogether and replace it with a text link?
Yes, Dan, your mock-up of a graphic (the letters "PDF" in red on a white
background) is fine. :)
--
Tony Sebro, General Counsel, Software Freedom Conservancy
+1-212-461-3245 x11
[email protected]
www.sfconservancy.org
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