--- Michael Snow wikipedia@earthlink.net wrote:
Illustrating the product is hardly a free ticket to fair use, even if that's what the images do here. I don't particularly buy that either; the images are logos that identify the user with the product, not actual illustrations of the product. Also, fair use arguments for user pages are a serious stretch. In most cases, the use has no relationship to the purposes enumerated in the Copyright Act (criticism, comment, scholarship, research, etc.).
IANAL but I have taken more than my fair share of business law classes. So based on that, along with all the other experience I've gained while dealing with copyright issues on Wikipedia, I have to say that I completely agree with Michael on this point.
Our fair use argument for logos is only strong for the very limited use of illustrating an article about the organization that owns trademark of the logo. That is a very clear educational use and should survive a challenge to our fair use claim. Having that same logo linked from thousands of user pages, however, has no valid fair use claim that I can think of.
Unlike copyright, the holder of a trademark must take adequate measures to protect that trademark (registered or not) in order to keep it. Therefore I think these logos should be removed immediately from their templates.
-- mav
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