[Commons-l] Beer and copyright

[Michael Maggs]

Generally, these are straight copyvios and can be speedily deleted.  
There is no general defence to copyright infringement of a printed 
design that the design happens to appear on a can or a label.

See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:CB#Product_packaging

Uncertainty can arise, though, where a design is old or is very similar 
to an old design (eg the Marmite jar).

Also

Ets-Hokin v. Skyy Spirits, Inc., 225 F.3d 1068 (9th Cir. 2000)

can sometimes come into play, though does not provide the worldwide permission to copy any label design that some would like.

What would help a lot is to have some well-defined way of recording against a kept image the copyright rationale under which it is being kept.


Michael


Joe Szilagyi wrote:
> Some of you may recall that about 5-6 (?) weeks ago we had a slew of 
> deletion requests of beer bottles and cans. If my memory is correct, 
> virtually all of them were "keep" under the rationale that the images 
> didn't fall under fair use or copyright violations for our purposes. 
> There is a fresh DR on this today:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Pacifico_lata.jpg
>
> And another just closed as delete the other day. We have numerous 
> images that are ostensibly just, well, images of products:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Marmite-Guinness_edition.JPG
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:A_bottle_of_Budweiser.JPG
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Stolichnaya.jpg
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Stoli.jpg
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ursuswodka.JPG
>
> This isn't specific to alcohol products, of course--just went for 
> those as they seem to be the topic of discussion. Should we be hosting 
> such images?
>  
> - Joe
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