Yeah, reading your description of your image, i think it’s a graphic of a prism, and not actually a knockoff of a particular famous graphic of a prism. There are a lot of prism graphics out there, and it’s too generic an idea to trademark.
Actually, it probably is trademarked, but that’s not a concern here, since trademarks are domain-specific. If your garage band released an album, and you used the exact same image you’re using as your icon as the cover art, that probably would be a trademark infringement. But you’re not doing that, so that doesn’t matter.
Wouldn’t they be covered by trademark, not copyright - and since they are not posing as characters in anything, would be okay. It appears you can’t copyright titles - people reuse them all the time.
And just to mention that the OP mentions freehanding the image. How it is made is not important, I’d think. Copyright preceded typewriters, after all.
I think that is pretty important. If he had downloaded an image of the album cover and converted it to a .ico file, then that would definitely be copying, and we’d be discussing if the copying was copyright infringement or fair use. In this case a new work was created from scratch, so it wasn’t literal copying.
Even created from scratch it could still be copyright infringement, but that is going to make it more difficult to prove. Just like not all drawings of a banana are infringing Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol, I don’t see how all drawings of prism can also be infringing.
Of course, the very unsatisfactory answer to questions like this is that nobody knows the answer until it is fully litigated in court.
Hmm… remember this case?
The only winners were the lawyers.
Those would be yes. The main thing I was trying to say is while these would be violations, in practice, who is going to be touring our development lab, see the icons, and sue the company? Answer: Nobody. Ever.
So, something can be a violation but not be a significant risk too.
Well it could be. Trademarks must be protected or else you lose them. That is why Disney went after a daycare in Florida for illicit use of their trademark - the bad press was worth keeping the value of their ™s. Copyright does not have to be protected in the same way.
Yeah, and it’s possible that Pink Floyd never even bothered to register it. That’s why I hedged and said “probably”.
I’ve never seen the details of that case, but it’s quite possible it would have been even worse press to not go after them. Not all daycares are good, and nobody at Disney wants to see stories about some scandal at “that Disney daycare”. And even if the place wasn’t scandalous, that’s not something that Disney has any control over, and you don’t want your name attached to something that you can’t control.
A quick search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark database suggests the prism design has not only been trademarked for music, but also for clothing. No idea what other ancillary uses the band/publisher might be trying to protect.
I believe I worked on those servers.
I set up the first LAN for the National Air and Space Museum. (I am not making this up.)
You’ll never guess what I called the first two servers.
Air and Space?
Nope.
Wilbur and Orville?
My home router is palantir #
Bingo!
Since the OP says they had access to the original work, I wasn’t considering the difficulty of proving it.
There were cases of accusations that a company copied the code to implement the instruction set of another companies computer. The protection against this kind of case was to keep the developers isolated from this code, even if the second company had it. Then they could prove that any direct duplication of code were accidental or because that was the only reasonable implementation.
So, if there could be literal copying, say because the accused had access to the original, then they might be in trouble.
And sure, showing mechanical copying makes it easier for the plaintiff.
I agree. I was just nitpicking. That’s my job.
IIRC he said it was the Health Sciences Center.
I don’t blame them. I had to look closely to see it was pixilated, at the size shown it looked just posterized. If the Obama Hope can be sued for being posterized and recoloured, no surprise if an immediately identifiable photo is rendered in close to true colours for the same sort of industry.
The difference in Canada is tht generally the loser in a lawsuit pays the winner’s bills, thus discouraging frivolous or Hail-Mary lawsuits. If your case sucks, settle.
Still, a prism illustration is sufficiently generic that without any other reference (don’t call the app “The Dark Side”), and unless it copies the proportions exactly (for example the angle of spread of the rainbow) and unless it is in the same tenor (sorry, like it was for music) it’s a reach to call it a copy. It’s just a coincidence.
Mine is Chimaera. I hope Disney doesn’t find out.