Discussion:
Hi,
I am the lead of an open source project, for illustration lets call it "Slice". This organization is not a legal entity, it consists of 50 losely organized developers spread around the world.
One person in the community and I designed a new logo for the project, together with a tag line, for illustration lets call it "Brainstorm with Slice". I am in California, the other person lives in a European country.
Now I have two questions, both are related to protecting the use of the logo artwork:
1. Logo trademark.
I already use the TM on the name of the open source project, "Slice". Is it possible and feasible to TM also the new logo? With tagline? If so, how?
2. Copyright of logo artwork
If I interpret the legalese correctly, the copyright belongs automatically to the two designers:
(C) 2005 by First Person and Second Person
However, we have some strong voices in the open source community to do this:
(C) 2005 by Slice Contributors
Slice Contributors is not an actual person, it is the collective of a losely organized open source community.
I do not think this makes sense under the copyright law. I am correct?
Thanks,
Slicelogo
Answer:
What is the name of your state?Hi,
I am the lead of an open source project, for illustration lets call it "Slice". This organization is not a legal entity, it consists of 50 losely organized developers spread around the world.
One person in the community and I designed a new logo for the project, together with a tag line, for illustration lets call it "Brainstorm with Slice". I am in California, the other person lives in a European country.
Now I have two questions, both are related to protecting the use of the logo artwork:
1. Logo trademark.
I already use the TM on the name of the open source project, "Slice". Is it possible and feasible to TM also the new logo? With tagline? If so, how?
2. Copyright of logo artwork
If I interpret the legalese correctly, the copyright belongs automatically to the two designers:
(C) 2005 by First Person and Second Person
However, we have some strong voices in the open source community to do this:
(C) 2005 by Slice Contributors
Slice Contributors is not an actual person, it is the collective of a losely organized open source community.
I do not think this makes sense under the copyright law. I am correct?
Thanks,
Slicelogo Under whose laws are you worried about trademark and copyright?
Answer:
As stated, the developers are spread around the world. I am the most likely person to protect the copyright and trademark, I live in California.
Thanks,
slicelogo
Answer:
1. Logo trademark.
I already use the TM on the name of the open source project, "Slice". Is it possible and feasible to TM also the new logo? With tagline? If so, how? Just use the "TM" symbol. Use of the "TM" symbol simply means that you are asserting that you have rights to the trademark -- it doesn't mean that actually have any rights. Since the use doesn't give you any rights, its use is unregulated. If you needed to enforce your mark, you would be enforcing a "common law" mark, and part of the burden you would need to establish in court is that you actually have obtained common-law trademark rights through use of the mark in commerce.
If you actually want to obtain the protections of a registered trademark, you will need to apply for a registration through the US Patent and Trademark Office, .
2. Copyright of logo artwork
If I interpret the legalese correctly, the copyright belongs automatically to the two designers:
(C) 2005 by First Person and Second Person
However, we have some strong voices in the open source community to do this:
(C) 2005 by Slice Contributors
Slice Contributors is not an actual person, it is the collective of a losely organized open source community.
I do not think this makes sense under the copyright law. I am correct? There is no problem with having an entity, loose of not, hold the copyright to a work. There are provisions in the U.S. copyright law which effectively state that contributors to a "collective" work are not entitled to a copyright on their contributions -- the copyright vests in the collective work. Look up the definitions in 17 USC 101 for more information.
Answer:
Thanks for answering the question.
On copyright, assuming original copyright ownership and right of community to collective work, is the following terminology correct?
(C) 2005 by First Person and Second Person. The Slice Contributors hold a copyright on the collective work and may reproduce and distribute the logo contribution as part of it.
Thanks,
slicelogo
Answer:
Thanks for answering the question.
On copyright, assuming original copyright ownership and right of community to collective work, is the following terminology correct?
(C) 2005 by First Person and Second Person. The Slice Contributors hold a copyright on the collective work and may reproduce and distribute the logo contribution as part of it.
Thanks,
slicelogo I'm not sure that makes any sense. When you have a collaborative work, the copyright is owned by a single entity -- so either "first and second person" or the "slice contributors community." It doesn't make sense they way you have parsed this out. Maybe you could provide more info about how you want to "ownership" of the work to vest, and we can go from there.
A couple of things -- first, copyright notice is not required anymore, so legally it doesn't really have any significance except to let people know you hold a copyright. Second, use of the logo is probably more or a trademark issue than a copyright issue. Third, maybe you should look into "nontraditional" copyright forms to see if those would work better for you -- a lot of open source developers and communities are now registering their works with a "creative commons" licensing scheme rather than traditional copyright.
EDIT: Here's a link to the creative commons group: