Cc-at mailing list

[Roland Alton <roland AT alton.at>]

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
> _______________________________________________
> List info and archives at 
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
> Unsubscribe at http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/cc-community