I am a grad student in history and am currently working on a paper I intend to shop around to academic journals when completed. I am arguing that the creators of a particular organization were inspired by a larger, older organization and that the new group derived much of its symbolism from the older group.
I have a problem. The symbols and I belive the newer group’s name are copyrighted, and aggressively protected. It must be possible to publish them under certain circumstances because I see them in the news every day. Can I publish them without permission? Is use in an academic journal considered “fair use”? I could publish the article without the images, but I think a side by side comparison would really drive my point home.
I am located in the US. I can reveal the name of the organization in question if it matters. All the ususal cavets apply. You are not my lawyer, etc.
I could ask them, but I would rather spare myself the hassle. This group also seems very protective of how they are seen. My article is complementary, but I am afriad they would want to read it before they give permission and might demand changes if they see anything that is not just right.
Do news magazines get permission before printing copyrighted images? I don’t know, I am genuinely curious.
Do you mean copyrights or trademarks? With symbols and an organization’s name, it’s probably the latter.
In which case, you’re in luck. The First Amendment trumps trademark protection. You can print their trademarks in an article (newspapers, for instance, don’t need to get permission for reporting on the company or printing their logo as a graphic). You would only get into potential trouble if you were trying to sell a product with their trademarks.
Thus, I can say “Apple Computer sucks” and won’t have to worry about Apple coming after me for trademark violation. You can analyze the situation as much as you want – with examples of their trademarks – without fear.
If you want to use small excerpts of their copyrighted materials for the purpose of criticism, fair use would also apply. Unfortunately they could still bring a suit and force you to defend yourself. You would most likely win unless you used a substantial amount of material, but it could be a hassle and at least temporarily expensive. You might consider whether their motivation to cause you a hassle would be greater than their wish to save the money it would cost them to do so.
What RealityChuck said regarding trademarks, and what eulalia said about copyrighted material and fair use.
Even if your use of the image does not violate any laws, you might still run into trouble. One problem is that many publishers, including many academic publishers, have stricter rules regarding permissions than the law actually requires.
My wife (also a history grad student) was doing some work for a professor a couple of years ago, getting permissions from libraries and archives to use images in the professor’s book. In some cases, the images she wanted to use were well out of copyright, and could legally be used with no problem at all. Yet the publishers, in full CYA mode, still insisted that she get permission from the institution that owned the physical copy of the image, and these permissions for reproduction could be anywhere from $25 to a few hundred dollars per image.
It’s something that gets me steamed up, because publishers who do this are effectively allowing institutions and other holders of out-of-copyright material to continue asserting a type of copyright control over that material. And, because the author is usually the one who foots the bill for the permission fees (in academic publishing, at least), there is no financial cost to the publisher in doing this.
So far as I can tell, the use the OP describes is perfectly legal. A publisher’s lawyers might want to be more careful than is strictly necessary. This is something that must be worked out between the OP and the publisher.
You can write anything you want in the privacy of your own home. When you find someone willing to publish it, they will apply their policies as to whether you can include the images. It is much more likely that a publisher would be sued for improper use of copyrighted material, rather than the author, mostly because of the “deep pockets” principle, and publishers have lawyers and experience with this stuff. So if someone offers to publish it you probably don’t have much to worry about, and if *nobody * offers to publish it then you don’t have *anything * to worry about.
If you were planning on publishing your material directly to the web I might offer more cautious advice.
Basically what i’d do, if i were you, is simply write your paper the way you want, including the images you want, and send it to the journal. They’ll let you know if they believe there are any copyright or other issues to deal with.
I think that is exactly what I will do. The article can stand on its merits without the images so if they tell me cut them out then its no big deal. If they want to publish them than we can go from there. One of these journals published an article on the same organization a few years ago, so for all I know they may have already worked out an understanding.
Well, yes, except that all publishing contracts have a clause in which the author warrants the work is his own. A publisher can force you to pay legal fees and any judgment as part of the contract.
Really? I will, of course, be very straightforward about the status of the symbols. Would a publisher really ignore the issue, tell me its fine and for me to just sign the paper, and then pass on any losses to me? That seems like an extremely unethical and potentially stupid way to do buisness.
I don’t think that’s what Chuck was talking about. I think the clauses he’s talking about are the ones aimed at authors who plagiarize and lie to their publishers about it.
Yes. We get confused with the differences between copyright and trademarks. But trademarks are never a problem with books.
With copyright, anyone can sue the publisher for what is in something it publishes. This includes plagiarism and defamation. The author can be held liable for any judgments. There is a clause to that effect in all book contracts. A savvy author will make sure the clause has the words “if sustained” in it; otherwise the publisher can settle and send you the bill. “If sustained” means there has to be an actual court judgment (at the very least).