Stephen Bain wrote:
But the thing with seals and stuff like that is that
there are
typically many versions made, which eventually go out of copyright.
For Australia-relates things, for example, we use the now public
domain 1912 version of the coat of arms, which still contains all the
same elements (the shield, the wattle branches, the emu and the
kangaroo) but is drawn differently.
These obsolete public-domain versions will be useful for various
"decorative" uses, such as icons in navboxes or in userboxes or on
WikiProject pages, but IMO it would still be perfectly appropriate to
use the current copyrighted fair-use versions in the article on the
state itself (or an article specifically on the coat of arms, if there
is one) in the same way that we use company logos.