Wikipedia talk:Logos/Archive 1

message: Hello again, 
and sorry for my perfectible english. I see that my question about the presence of commercial logos in wikipedia pages has disappeared from the village pump, so I put it again because from my point of view, these logos don't bring any information; on the other side such a logo entertain the image of the company in our minds, that's why I consider it as advertising. Why do you think commercial firms pay a lot of money to have their logos visible during big events? Hémant 15:47, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: My own view is that the logo is the the corporate equivalent of a person's portrait. I feel that a picture of Mark Twain or Hans Christian Andersen or Stephen Crane or Nicole Kidman adds something to an encyclopedia article, even though it is hard to make any left-brained logical explanation of precisely what information it conveys. In similar manner, I think that a logo is a very reasonable thing to have in an article about a company. As to the point that the logo promotes the company, well, so does the mere presence of an article (by indicating that the company is significant enough to deserve mention in an encyclopedia). Any article on practically anything of contemporary commercial significance can be regarded as having a promotional effect.  Should we not have articles on J. K. Rowling or Nicole Kidman or Eminem on the basis that commercial firms "pay a lot of money" to publicize these people? That's my $0.02, go to Wikipedia talk:Logos and Wikipedia:Logos and let us have yours. Dpbsmith 23:59, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Logos

message: I wanted to address the concerns of some Wikipedians that logo use promotes the commercial interests of the company. I therefore added a paragraph describing what I see as the rationale for including a logo in an encyclopedia article:
:The encyclopedic rationale for including a logo is similar to the rationale for including portraits of, e.g. Stephen Crane or Nicole Kidman. It is difficult to explain in words what information is conveyed by such a portrait, yet most users feel that they provide something valuable. The logo should be regarded as the corporate portrait.
I also added this:
*Avoid using a logo in any way that creates an impression that the purpose of its inclusion is to promote the company.  Generally, logos should be used only when the company and its logo are reasonably familiar (or when the logo itself is of interest for design or artistic reasons).
This is perhaps so subjective as to be utterly useless; consider its inclusion a trial balloon. My concern here is to fend off teeming hordes of millions of people putting in 640x480-pixel logos for Sam's Central Street Gas and Convenience Mart (Buy Your Mass Lottery Tickets Here). Probably won't happen (particularly not as long as image uploads are disabled) and if it did, the policy probably wouldn't stop it, but, there it is. Dpbsmith 14:19, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes on Jan 3rd changes 

message: I've been uploading some wine labels (see Big White House for an example) under the "logo" rationale. This strikes me as the sort of thing that's perfect under fair use, as the interest is both artistic (many people collect wine labels) and practical (you can easily find the bottle at a store). Does anyone know for certain whether this is or is not fair use? I could always delete them all if need be, but I'd rather not. :( --Dante Alighieri | Talk 16:36, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)
:I don't see why not.  We're doing a similar thing over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Beer --Sean κ. ⇔ 20:11, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wine Labels 

message: This one isn't in the list; could it be added? Logo images should always be surrounded by an image box and be labelled with a caption, to make it clear that the logo is being used as an illustration, not as a logo. Doops |  talk 03:16, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: another commonsense guideline

message: By stating that only using low resoulution version of logos is fair use, I disagree. For example if you print a page containing a low resoultion logo, the result may distort tha logo so much you can't identify it at all. Also implying that resolution has any relevancy to fair use is irrelevant, it's the usage of said image that defines fair use. →AzaToth 18:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Objection about using low resolution logos 

message: I've made two templates for user pages. Template:Uncyclopedian and Template:H2G2Researcher. Initially they had little logos for the web sites they exist for people to link to. But now people are citing this policy to say that the use of these logos violates Wikipedia policy even when the exact same images are used in articles so that User Pages are now more restricted in their content than regular articles. Now I ask you, does that make sense? There must be something I'm fundamentally not getting about copyright law here, or else something really stupid has been going on with how site policy is written. --00:03, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  User Pages and Templates vs Articles? 

message: I have added the following section, and it has been reverted away twice without being moved here by someone who apparently thinks it is a major change.  In fact, the statutes and case law below predate the creation of this guideline, so this has always been true the entire time this guideline has been in effect.  Therefore, I will be replacing it soon. --James S. 15:19, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Since trademarks can be modified for non-commercial use, does this still apply, in a practical sense, to Wikipedia? Per Jimbo's message here, it seems that, though modification is by no means prevented by copyright law, these images must still be allowed for commercial use on Wikipedia. These three precedents seem overemphasized in this guideline, as, generally, these images still can't be used on Wikipedia and therefore likely don't mean much. — Rebelguys2 talk 07:49, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  U.S. trademark law section 

message: U.S. law protects the use of trademarks by nonowners for purposes of criticism and commentary.  First Amendment considerations override any expressive, noncommercial use of trademarks. "The Constitution is not offended when the [Maine] antidilution statute is applied to prevent a defendant from using a trademark without permission in order to merchandise dissimilar products or services. ... The Constitution does not, however, permit the range of the antidilution statute to encompass the unauthorized use of a trademark in a noncommercial setting such as an editorial or artistic context." (emphasis added) L.L. Bean, Inc. v. Drake Pubs., Inc., 811 F.2d 26, 31, 33 (1st Cir. 1987.)
Similarly, the Federal Trademark Dilution Act of 1995 does not apply to the "noncommercial use" of a famous mark. 15 U.S.C. 1125(c)(4)(B). The U.S. Supreme Court has defined "commercial speech" as "speech which ... propose[s] a commercial transaction." Virginia Pharmacy Ed. v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 748, 762 (1976.)
The only limit on this right is whether someone might think that the commentary was produced by the trademark owner.  "[A]n author certainly would have a First Amendment right to write about the subject of the Boy Scouts and/or Girl Scouts. However, this right is diluted by trademark law insofar as that author cannot present her subject in a manner that confuses or misleads the public into believing, through the use of one or more trademarks, that those organizations have produced or sponsored the work in question." (emphasis added) Girl Scouts of the United States v. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 808 F. Supp. 1112 at 1121, n. 12 (S.D.N.Y. 1992.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nrcprm2026 (talk • contribs) 
:Since trademarks can be modified for non-commercial use, does this still apply, in a practical sense, to Wikipedia? Per Jimbo's message here, it seems that, though modification is by no means prevented by copyright law, these images must still be allowed for commercial use on Wikipedia. These three precedents seem overemphasized in this guideline, as, generally, these images still can't be used on Wikipedia and therefore likely don't mean much. — Rebelguys2 talk 07:49, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  U.S. trademark law 

message: Ed g2s has removed all football club logos from all tournment pages like Royal League 2005-06, UEFA Cup Finals and probably many more. Is this really necesary? Logos are not removed on European Cup and Champions League finals. Is it a reason for this? Arnemann 20:09, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably.  Logos are intended to be used to illustrate the team in question (e.g. on pages about the team itself).  While I haven't looked at every edit of his, it looked like the team logos were being used more for decoration and weren't really essential.  I would suggest that the team logos on European Cup and Champions League finals be removed as well.  JYolkowski // talk 20:29, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Football club logos 

message: I would like the following to be considered for inclusion as a guideline:
"Logos that contain corporate slogans should be omitted in favour of equivalent logos that do not."
This desire was sparked by reviewing the article Safeway Inc.  Previously this article displayed prominently the logo :Image:Safeway-logo.gif, which contained the company logo and its slogan, "Ingredients for life."  It has since been replaced with :Image:Safeway-logo.png, which only contains the visual logo.  This additional guideline would stem from a current guideline which states "Avoid using a logo in any way that creates an impression that the purpose of its inclusion is to promote the company." Kurieeto 17:07, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Many corporate logos do not include slogans in their logos. If they do, then it is usually a promotional logo that is used only for web or other publications. It may take a bit more work to find a logo without the slogan, but it would be preferable than using the version with the slogan. However, some logos have a slogan as a part their inherit design. In this case, I do not believe we would want to ban or redesign the logo. One example: :Image:5ADay_logo.gif should be allowed if this is the only version available to the public. As long the policy statement (as Kurieeto worded it above: "Logos that contain corporate slogans should be omitted in favour of equivalent logos that do not.") does not mean censorship, but a preference of non-slogan logos over those that have them then I don’t see any problem with it. --Adam Clark(User_Talk) (email) 02:01, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Agreed, the guideline proposed does not mean censorship.  It's been a week since the original proposal was made and no other issues have been raised, so I've added this guideline to the list. Kurieeto 23:02, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Logos with slogans 

message: What does everyone think about removing the section on trademark law? I don't think it adds anything to this guideline, for the following reasons:
#The first paragraph effectively says that we can use logos in article because of fair use, which is redundant with the rest of the guideline. It continues by discussing use in a non-commercial editorial or artistic context. Non-commercial use only images are not allowed on Wikipedia, so this guideline has no relevance to what is allowed. "Editorial or artistic context" is the same as fair use, regardless.
#The second paragraph only discusses non-commercial use. Again, Wikipedia explicity forbids the use of this kind of image, so we must fall back on fair use which is already extensively discussed.
#The third paragraph discusses how we shouldn't use logos to mislead people into thinking that the company has sponsored the work in question. This is Wikipedia, and obviously we are steadfastly against using it as a venue for advertisement and the like, so there is no chance of this happening.
I think that adding a few paragraphs of court precedent at the end is simply redundant (discussing fair use), irrelevant (discussing non-commercial use), and solely offers confusion to the masses on Wikipedia with no understanding of copyright law. I will be making the changes soon if there are no strong objections.
In addition, I am looking at copyediting this page for greater accessibility, namely by dividing that long list of bullet points into subsections — the procedure for using a logo, what to do if there are objections, formatting of the logo, etc., and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or input. Thanks! — Rebelguys2 talk 20:14, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Trademark law

message: This is an area I'm just not sure on - is a stub template a permissible location for a logo? The stub I'm referring to is: Template:melbourne-rail-stub. Whilst the logo is probably the ideal icon for the template, I'm unsure as to whether it is an allowed use.
Looking forward to clarification --Evan C (Talk) 13:50, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Cheers for that - I've uploaded a sloganless version of the logo, it's a bit clearer too (having been rendered directly from a vector version). I think I'll note on the stub's page that, as a guide, it should only be used on pages relating to Metlink connected services, etc - not on V/Line stations, for example. --Evan C (Talk) 13:09, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Absolutely not. Fair use images are not allowed in templates, or anywhere outside the main article namespace. A company's logo should only really be used on the company's page, and anywhere where the logo is the subject of the text. ed g2s • talk 01:01, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Bah! OK then - I've replaced it with an icon based on an image I made myself - you can't say that's not permitted! --Evan C (Talk) 04:04, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If the image you made yourself was a manual copy or derivative of the original logo (in copyright sense) or was confusingly similar to the original logo (in trademark sense), then it is not permitted in templates or on Commons. Try putting your stub category image on Commons and see what they think. --Damian Yerrick (☎) 21:11, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The image I made myself is a vector artwork of one of our trains - not at all a logo :) --Evan C (Talk) 07:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Logos in stub templates?  

message: Site with nearly 5000 logos in Adobe Illustrator format. They seem to be copyrighted, but if fair use is being claimed, that shouldn't be an issue, should it? grendel|khan 00:22, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Resource for logos. 

message: Hello,
I have added a photograph of a logo at Society of Professional Journalists - what do you think about that? How about if we took photos of logos and put them up? So, for example, if we went to the local Safeway, took a photo of its sign, and posted it, it would be a depiction of their logo. The photo is our own work. What are people's thoughts about this? Guroadrunner 12:47, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: From a copyright point of view: This would not change the fact that we are simply reproducing the logos.  A verbatim photograph does not possess the "original creativity" needed to make it an original work.  Suppose that I was an artist with a hot new painting on display in my gallery.  A visitor walks by, snaps a picture, and makes available high--quality copies to the general public.  This would undercut my profits---and courts would be sympathetic to my case.  Fair Use is a bit of an exception, but it allows only very narrow permissions. Hope this helps, GChriss 20:53, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I would consider a logo different than an artistic piece, but I see your point. What are other's thoughts on this? Guroadrunner 19:44, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  As I understand it, the photo would need to exhibit uniqueness - additional creativity or skill. So, if you took the photo taking in the whole building, or the area and supports on which the sign was installed, that would probably be enough to make it a photo of a sign et al, and not just a copy of a logo. Note, however, that I'm unsure if this is entirely accurate under US law (it is under Australian law). --Evan C (Talk) 12:42, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Boring rant, nah.  I am inclinded to agree with the above, as long as you don't zoom in too closely on the logo.  Taking a zoomed-in picture of a copyrighted/trademarked roadsign (e.g., McDonalds), not cool.  Taking a picture of the nearby road, cars, and sign is just fine.  GChriss 18:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Taking photos of logos and signs