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  • From: Roland Alton <roland AT alton.at>
  • To: cc-at AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [CC-at] Logos in CC Presentationen verwenden
  • Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 00:02:03 +0200

Eine ähnliche Diskussion läuft gerade auf cc-community. Ein ShareThis Icon steht unter der PD+GPL+CC, steht aber unter markenrechtlichen Einschränkungen seitens der Firma ShareThis.

Mal sehen ob sich wer zumutet das anzufechten. Denn die GPL lässt weitere Einschränkungen nicht zu.

I used a following icon for a service I maintain:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sharethis.svg

According to the Open Icon Library, the icon was released to the
public domain. According to Wikipedia, it is quad-licensed under the
GPL, LGPL, BSD and Creative Commons Attribution 2.5:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_icon

I've received a request from the icon author to stop using the icon
(forwarded at the bottom). I plan to comply with the request, because
I was not aware that the icon is associated with some specific
service, but I wonder if the request is valid? Can work that the
author requires to be used on very restrictive terms
(https://sharethis.com/usage-guidelines) be released to the public
domain or covered by some liberal license?

Trademark and copyright are two different things. It's usually hard for
something graphical to be trademarked and public domain because you can't
trademark something that is already in general usage (or if you try it
your mark can be challenged). Thus marks generally happen to be
copyrighted works too. Not always though, some marks may not even qualify
for copyright protection.

For example being public domain means you can modify that logo to not
look like theirs, or do other things with it that don't infringe
trademark law - like use it in an app which is using ShareThis.

Trademark also deals with different things. It's about protecting abuse
of the goodwill. So if you sit at home and use it nobody cares (unlike
copyright). On your website it's a different matter.

features. However, the ShareThis service does not power the icon that
appears on the site. We’d love for example.com to continue using our
trademarked icon, but we require that our sharing solution to be used
along with it.

Which is the issue here. The question really is what the history of the
mark is and whether they previously didn't protect it or let it be used
generally. If they did then they may have a problem. If not then the
trademark is implying your sharing is their ShareThis service when it
isn't.

Earlier this year, we experienced an increase in customer inquiries
regarding privacy concerns related to sharing. In many instances,
those inquiries were relevant to websites that used our ubiquitous
icon, but with another company’s service behind it.

In order to avoid further customer confusion, we have changed our
terms of service. We now require that the icon be used in conjunction
with our own sharing service. This change furthers our mission to make
sharing a smooth and seamless process for consumers and publishers
alike. To comply with these terms of service, we ask that example.com
replace its current sharing service with ShareThis. Alternatively,
example.com can remove our icon from its site.

The ShareThis solution offers many benefits to consider

Now as far as I can see ShareThis might actually have a problem. The icon
was it seems released under the GPL as well as other licenses. The GPL
prohibits additional restrictions so you can possibly pick a fight with
them (and as a GPL violation in theory revokes your right to use GPL work
they'd lose the mark entirely if they lost so it would be a big deal).

Or you could perhaps use the Open Share Icon everyone else is now using
so that nobody will even have heard of 'sharethis' in a few years.

I guess you can hedge your bets by replying that you don't recognize the
legitimacy of their claim given the prior GPL licence but you've swapped
it out of politeness ?

Alan
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