Hacker News Reader

Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

It seems a little dangerous to include logos for various companies. I could see the likes of Reddit and Y Combinator turning a blind eye, but would we expect the same from Google, Microsoft, and Apple? I am no legal expert, but wouldn't those icons present a long term problem if this project were to truly become successful?

View on HN

Don't many of these companies have specific terms on how their logos should be used on external sites to represent things like platform-specific apps? I'm not sure if custom-made fonts would be included in those terms, but I know these companies aren't dead set against there being no external usage.

Custom fonts are fine as long as they match the guidelines. I think they will have some issue-- mostly the ones that look different than the original icons (i.e. the white outlined versions).

https://twitter.com/logo

https://github.com/logos

https://www.facebookbrand.com/dos-donts

http://www.apple.com/legal/sales-support/certification/docs/...

Page 12 -- No go "Do not use the Apple logo alone in channel affiliate communications, including web pages." (I.e. You can't just show the Apple Icon)

https://www.dropbox.com/branding

Yahoo's icon actually doesn't look like Yahoos brand icon so I would call that one a pass

http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/promote/b...

Pretty much no restrictions for the robot-- accept you need attribution according to Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.

http://developer.linkedin.com/documents/branding-guidelines

Linked in is specific in what the logo can be used for, instead of what it looks like. So this font is fine, but even in the preview the logo should point to a linked in page or profile.

http://www.youtube.com/yt/brand/using-logo.html

The logo the author used isn't the one trademarked-- fair use here.

https://vine.co/logo

"Use only the official, unmodified files to represent our brand." So this ones a no (though it's confusing... what if the author used the original glyph? Is conversion considered modification? I suppose)

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/Tr...

Unless that glyph isn't trademarked it's not okay to use, even the logos mentioned state:

"Do not use in... Web sites for any purpose except pursuant to an express written trademark license from Microsoft."

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Promotional_graphics

Bitcoins assets are fair game.

http://dribbble.com/branding

Seems to be okay, since colors are 'encouraged' and the gylph is shown as ones that are okay to use.

http://www.reddit.com/about/alien/

Absolutely no go: "We require a license to use these logos in anything outside reddit, both for free and for profit."

---

Summing up here I was surprised to learn that the restrictions are more stringent than I thought. If I were the author I'd clean up the alternate version and remove the Glyphs that aren't specifically allowed, otherwise anyone who uses your font is technically opening themselves up to trademark violations.

I went a step ahead and included none of the social icons in my Clear icon set http://appzgear.com/products/clear-icons.htm I found each company has specific guidelines on usage of their of their trademarks/service marks with no clear mention of selling them as part of an icon set. I'm not an expert and I don't want to risk getting into a legal quagmire.

These are all trademarks, many of them registered. You must place (R) for registered and (TM) for non-registered next to the mark when you display it. These lack that. The idea is that if you don't note this, you cannot claim it is a unique and defensible mark. Hence, I'd expect that if using Apple logos in this way gained traction, you'd get some nasty letters, since by definition of trademark law, you must defend the use of your mark, if you want to retain it. That's part of why Apple will sue "Bob's Apple Store" because if they don't seek to enforce their "Apple Store" mark, then anyone else can also use it.

You're not required to use the ® and ™ marks to denote trademarks. Look at the web sites for Apple, Twitter, Facebook, etc. No ®s to be found.

IANAL but as far as I understand it, the purpose of a trademark symbol is to save you from having to send C&Ds to unwitting infringers. Your trademark doesn't lose its status just because you left of the registration symbol.

"not dead set against .. no" is awfully hard to parse.

I don't think so. I can't really invert the "not dead set" part.

It should be 'not dead set against any external usage.'

Font Awesome is pretty popular and I haven't seen anything happening there with regards to this situation, so this is a non-issue IMO.

I am not sure if the "But Mom, all my friends were doing it" defense will hold up in court.

In all seriousness, they are claiming copyright over an icon that is clearly meant to represent a brand's copyrighted and trademarked logo. Then they are rereleasing that logo under a MIT license. I have never gone to law school, but I can't imagine that Apple's lawyers will be thrilled by that.

I understand, but it's not always so cut and dry. Seeing that a popular almost identical non-controversial product is doing the same thing without any legal action is a vote of confidence in my book. Having been part of a hobbyist organization who has had experience with dealing with large corporations who hold copyrights (in music), I am privy to information you might be surprised at what companies choose to let slide as unofficial policy.

Different kinds of IP have different properties in different places. In particular, in some cases, the rights continue until they run out unless they are deliberately relinquished, while in other cases the rights must be defended or they can be weakened. Just because you've seen organisations let copyright infringement slide in the past, that doesn't necessarily mean they would let something like trademark use go unchallenged in the same way.

I'm disappointed that there's no penguin.

No BSD daemons, or Puffy logos either. Damn these hipsters!

Me too :) https://github.com/driftyco/ionicons/issues/22

Exactly what is the worst thing that can happen?

Perhaps not the worse thing but being sued for trademark infringement is pretty bad.

A violation of terms of service. Whether that warrants respect is entirely upto the author.

Not at all. Is common pattern for icons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com