On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 10:47:48AM -0500, Simetrical wrote:
On 1/23/07, Jay R. Ashworth <jra(a)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
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra(a)baylink.com
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA
http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274