I’ve made a shortcut for a application we are developing for work. It will only be a desktop icon for those working for our company.
I drew it in paint I think. Not a direct copy. It’s very simple, (one shape, four lines) but is based on the cover of one of the most popular music albums of all time.
Is this dangerous waters (hint) or since I just freehanded it, should we be OK? This will never be sold or used for financial gain.
Well, no need to be coy, it’s a small icon that looks like the cover of Pink Floyds ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. Some will recognize it. Pink Floyd fans will for sure.
The co-worker developing the app named it PrISM. It’s an acronym. That rang a bell with me, so…
When dealing with copyright there’s often a lot of subjectivity. For example, it is is just a rainbow of light coming from a prism, then there’s probably not much of an issue. If it is the exact (or close) spray, with the same (or similar) angle, where a shaft of white light is entering from the same (or similar) angle, then it is a problem. Pink Floyd cannot copyright the idea of a shaft of light going through a prism. However, they do have copyright on their album cover.
However, it is unlikely that you could argue that your use fails into a protected area. So, technically, it would be likely be a copyright violation if it is quite similar. It is highly unlikely to ever be an issue, as how would they ever know? That being said I probably wouldn’t use it for one simple reason. Someday, years from now, somebody may decide to sell the application, even if it seems impossible right now. And somebody may just include that icon without thinking about it. Or without recognizing it (not everybody is a fan of Pink Floyd).
I would just find some royalty free/public domain image to use from the internet. Doing a Google image search finds tons of them.
Yeah, thanks. This will never be sold. Can’t be. The public will be able to view it, but the shortcut will not be there (it will just be text link to the URL). The image/ico does not appear on the website.
It’s very similar to the album cover though. Everyone that knows Pink Floyd will recognize it.
For safety sake I will look for public domain stuff.
In a more IMHO-sense, there was a company I worked for that named all their servers after Star Wars characters and places. The icons to go to these different servers were pictures of the characters or place. I was mainly just answering the question factually. Overall, it probably isn’t a big deal.
Ha, yah we had a couple of those servers too. No .icos for them though.
Kinda funny how it happend, one server lets say, was named KIRK. An acronym. Was not a reference to ST. So the next admin comes along and names something Spock or whatever.
Practically speaking, unless your app goes viral and becomes phenomenally popular, it’s unlikely that the copyright owner of the DSOTM cover art would ever find out about your icon, and even less likely that they’d bother even to send a Cease and Desist letter.
However, if you asked your company’s lawyers, they probably wouldn’t approve, since they’re risk-averse, humor-impaired bastards who probably like yacht rock.
But if you turn your icon by 90 degrees, so that the immediate resemblance to the DSOTM art is not quite so obvious, maybe you could get away with it.
BeepKillBeep sums up well some of the core issues.
Note that the fact that you were aware of the similarity in designing it, etc. would be a big issue in a (very hypothetical) trial.
While (again in a hypothetical case) the whole prism imagery is so generic and predates DSotM by centuries that a really good defense could be made in this regard, the legal fees, etc. make it into a certain loss financially.
Yup. We had one for all county emails a few years ago. Filtered by who emailed who. Was a mess. Took weeks to get put together. We have since changed our policies on how long we keep stuff.
I think there’s enough similar photos that a judge would have to say Pink Floyd does not have a copyright on that design element. Also, while Pink Floyd might have a copyright on that specific representation of a prism, I do not think you can copyright a scientific fact like a prism with this refractive index will bend light at that angle.
The actual Dark Side of the Moon album cover has a number of physically-incorrect details to it. It has more dispersion inside of the prism than it should, and less dispersion outside, and no color separation inside, and a nonphysical fading of the light inside, and almost no refraction of the violet beam as it exits the prism, and sharp boundaries between the colors. You can’t copyright a principle of physics, so what makes the Dark Side of the Moon image distinctively itself is all those slight ways in which it differs from the actual physics. So I’d imagine that, if you used an image that did conform more closely to the physics, you should be in the clear. Especially if the app it’s for is called “PRISM”, because there’s not really any way to make a picture of a prism that doesn’t bear a resemblance to the album cover.
I am not a graphic designer, but I’ve worked with many of them on my projects, and I can think of several ways to change the design enough to make it “inspired by” instead of “copied from.”
Don’t use the full spectrum of colors. Have the light fan out into, for example, red, yellow and blue.
Change the location of where the light comes in and the rainbow comes out.
Turn the prism 180 degrees so it points downward. You can either keep the shaft of light the same, or shift the angle somewhat.
Change the background color.
I think you’ll actually have playing around with different approaches until you find one that’s sufficiently the same, only different.
As I started with, copyright cases have a lot of subjectivity. A judge/jury is going to examine the two pieces and make a decision based on extrinsic and intrinsic values. They will be looking for whether it has a similar look and feel and it has been generally acknowledged that in these cases that is subjective and holistic.
Furthermore, I even specifically said that Pink Floyd does not, and cannot, have a copyright on the idea of a ray of light travelling through a prism. Sigh.
Oh, it is silly, in the sense that the probability of anyone who cares seeing the icon as a copyright infringement is close to zero. But there is a way for outsiders to see it. A FOIA request doesn’t have to be everyone and everything. It just has to be that one guy who has that one screenshot in that one email, who gets FOIA’d, and your icon is in the wild.
I don’t work for the government, but I’ve government contracts, and the they are absolutely terrible at respecting copyrights. Because, per obvious, no one who cares is likely to ever see it. So you are not the only scofflaw with your icon.
The fact that you don’t have just a resized screenshot of the original, you’re already way ahead of the pack in terms of legality. As an analogy, you’re going 70mph in 65mph zone, instead of 90mph. I won’t worry about, unless there’s something else that’d draw attention to you.
I recall talking to a DEC technician who mentioned there was one site that had 7 computers, and named each one after one of the seven dwarfs. It was a medical facility, so he said "I wonder what the psychiatrists thought when they saw the response “Welcome to the magic kingdom, you are logged into Grumpy.”
I would think that the light-into-prism thing is so generic, that there is no risk that anyone would think it’s an explicit rip-off of Pink Floyd. Indeed, there’s probably a whole generation in the workforce now that is either unaware or vaguely aware of the album cover. I saw a talk show where the host mentioned some popular 80’s TV character and the guest said “Who??”
As mentioned above, there are specific design anomalies/inaccuracies of the album cover vs real life that if you avoid a few of them, you are not copying. Plus, the name PRISM is also generic, descriptive of the science tool.
IANAL, but… The other question is - what would they sue for? You’re not in any way suggesting that you are representing Floyd or any of its output, (Hint- don’t name the sub-functions after band members or song titles) not charging the public money for it, nor are you lessening the market for their product, or pretending to be that product. But, unlike the Star Wars servers, don’t push the analogy too far.
