On Sunday 16 February 2003 09:24, Nick Betcher wrote: > > Currently Kopete is using icons that are presumably copyrighted and > > trademarked by AOL, Microsoft and ICQ. Despite this being a common > > AFAIK the ICQ icons aren't copyrighted (they're not the AOL ones, even > though they are familiar). That is impossible. The one that made the icon automatically has the copyright. I guess you want to say it was made by a KDE artist, and by sending it to KDE he gave KDE permission to use and license it. In that case there is no copyright problem. There may be a trademark problem. > > > practice in OSS IM applications, I am dubious of its legality -- unless > > there is somewhere a license for these things that I am unaware of. > > Again, AFAIK there is no license that I have come across explicitly denying > the use of icons from a certain program. Granted "The Running Man" *is* > copyrighted, the icon itself is probably not. Licenses are not denying rights, they grant rights (= license). Fully automatically everything is forbidden under copyright laws, just by making something. Only the maker has full rights. > The best idea at this point would be to actually research which icons are > and aren't copyrighted and ask the owners of the non-copyrighted ones if we > could use them. I will start this later today (it's 2:30am here, time to go > to bed) when I wake up. Again, all icons are copyrighted, unless the copyright was explicitely waved. There is just one thing to be researched first: were the used icons drawn by KDE artists? If yes, there are no direct copyright problems. Second question: are the icons interpretations, are there enough changes. If yes, there are no copyright problems. There still may be trademark problems. I suggest to first find out what should be done. Do not start with asking the companies. Cordialemente, Ante ****** http://home.uwnet.nl/~vita _______________________________________________ kde-artists mailing list kde-artists@mail.kde.org http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-artists