Jimmy Wales wrote:
Alphax wrote:
Well, the Firefox and Wikipedia logos are both copyrighted and trademarked. Recreating them from scratch would at least solve the first issue.
That's just wrong. Recreating them from scratch would not solve the first issue at all.
That's like saying that if I type in all of a Harry Potter book from scratch, it's no longer copyrighted.
Please, I ask people, don't speculate on legal matters unless and until you've learned more about them.
The kind of thing that he may be thinking about would only operate in very limited circumstances, and not at all in trademarks or patents.
If two people _independently_ produce identical pieces of work they can both have copyright protection, and neither has infringed upon the other. The horde of monkeys who managed to reproduce the Britannica would not be infringing because it could probably be proven that they did not even know how to read the original work, Practically, the situation is next to impossible in anything but the shortest works. Legal cases involving music copying can often hinge on whether the alleged infringer had the idea independently. For Wiktionary it can happen when someone independently uses the same definition as appears in a published dictionary. It could be the only plausible or even possible definition.
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