On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 10:47:48AM -0500, Simetrical wrote:
On 1/23/07, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
And, incidentally, you cannot *copyright* a logo. You trademark them.
That's not true. Logos, in general, are both copyrighted and trademarked. Here's the first link I found:
http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/faq/copyright/logos.htm
Also, I happen to know that both the WMF and Mozilla explicitly claim copyright (as well as trademark) on their logos, in case that interests you.
I'll look again; I've been told that logos are protected by trademark for lots of years.
You can claim anything, and your lawyers will recommend you do.
If, however, I took a picture of you standing next to your framed drawing hanging on your wall, there would most certainly be copyrightable expression in my photograph that was not solely derivative of your copyright in your work.
"Solely the derivative"? There's nothing "solely" in derivatives. By their very nature, they're shared copyrights: he owns the base work (the drawing), you own the derivative aspects (the angle, positioning, etc.). Both of you have exclusive rights to the resulting derivative work (i.e., either can "exclude" the other from distributing it), barring things like fair use and de minimis.
*Assuming such a work is, in fact, derivative*.
I assert that a copyright in the *program code* to Microsoft Word does *not* constitute a copyright in *the millions of different possible visual displays that program could produce* -- especially when you consider that those displays can differ markedly based on the choices of system fonts and color themes chosen by the computer's operator.
After reviewing a summary of Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer%2C_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corp., I would agree with this statement, but not your conclusion. The *program code* has little, if anything, to do with it. The issue is mainly the *icons*, and other specific display elements.
Yup. But those are incidental to the program, since they could be supplied by any desktop manager. That seems to me equivalent to Harley Davidson trying to trademark the sound of a V-twin engine, which is incidental to the operation of that engine design.
They were turned down, BTW; Supreme Court, as I recall.
For instance, consider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Microsoft_Office_Word_2007.png. In the upper left, there's some funky four-colored icon of interlocked squares. Copyrighted. Next to it there's a drawing of a floppy disk. Copyrighted (although the concept isn't, the exact image is). Below it there's a clipboard, over to the right there are two interlocked A's. All copyrighted images.
Are they, indeed, copyrightable? They're functional icons, and they aren't practically subject to a lot of changeability without people not being able to figure out what they mean.
The average user would likely confuse them with the similar icons in other programs.
Similarly, it seems not unlikely that the precise choices of font, positioning, and decoration for the various menus and so on are copyrighted. A general "look and feel" is not, and neither is the positioning of the elements themselves (which is basically utilitarian), but the precise choice of colors and fonts is definitely a creative exercise that can easily make the difference between visual attractiveness and unattractiveness.
And as I noted before, *that is in the hands of the person who themed a particular workstation (or the default theme for the OS)* -- it's almost *explicitly* not in the hands of the writers of the word processor.
Cheers, -- jra