Designer gets accused of stealing his own work and billed $18,000 • Hacker News Board

Re: Designer gets accused of stealing his own work and billed $18,000

#41

Post by thinkcomp » Mon, Apr 06, 2009, 7:55 PM UTC

thinkcomp wrote: post #16

mechanical_fish wrote: post #8

So the big question is: I've invented a logo. Where do I submit it, along with my identifying information, in order to get a certification (backed up by something that will hold up in court, like a notary's signature) that I uploaded and claimed it on a specific date? One obvious answer is "The US Copyright Office": http://www.copyright.gov/eco/index.html But that's $35 per registration. Seems like one of those onlin…

Logos are not copyrightable. You would trademark a logo.

To be more precise, some logos are not copyrightable. From http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf:

"Several categories of material are generally not eligible for federal copyright protection. These include among others: ... Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents."

Every legally protected logo I've ever seen is trademarked either at a state or federal level.

Re: Designer gets accused of stealing his own work and billed $18,000

#42

Post by thinkcomp » Mon, Apr 06, 2009, 8:56 PM UTC

mbrubeck wrote: post #19

thinkcomp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logos are not copyrightable. You would trademark a logo.

A name is just a trademark, but a logo is a work of art, and may be covered by both trademark and copyright law. For example, the Debian/Firefox controversy hinged on the non-free copyright license governing the Firefox logo artwork: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622

Despite what some random developer says on a bug report, the Firefox logo artwork is actually governed by the Mozilla trademark policy.

http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html

Furthermore, the implication that words are trademarks and logos are non-trademarkable works of art is misleading. Names and phrases registered as trademarks are called word marks, and graphical logos are considered design marks. Both are trademarks (or servicemarks if you're offering a service).

This is a pretty useless discussion in any event. If you're wondering how to protect your logo, you should really ask a lawyer. All I'm saying is that your lawyer will tell you that you should trademark your logo, and that copyrighting it would be a complete waste of your time.

Re: Designer gets accused of stealing his own work and billed $18,000

#43

Post by jcl » Mon, Apr 06, 2009, 9:19 PM UTC

zepolen wrote: post #21

This sort of mirrors my question about the legality of a TOS on the internet: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=548002 With no canonical examples of 'who was first', and bytes being bytes and therefore editable (ie. timestamps on files count for nothing whatsoever), it's impossible without some sort of trusted 3rd party in which to vouch for this guys story. Even if the author has paper sketches, they in turn mean…

True, ownership of the preliminary work can be faked. However, without intimate knowledge of file formats and graphics algorithms it would be challenging to, for example, come up with an Illustrator vector file that rasterizes byte-for-byte to the scaled-down logo images copied from his portfolio. (assuming the thieves copied the graphics directly and didn't think to make their own vector file first...)

It may even be enough for him to have a credible high-res, layer-separated Photoshop file; someone who does not have the skills to produce their own original artwork probably also lacks the skills to convincingly fake a high-res version of someone else's artwork.

(Not sure if this has held in court, but I'd bet it has come up before.)

Re: Designer gets accused of stealing his own work and billed $18,000

#44

Post by Adam503 » Tue, Apr 07, 2009, 6:17 AM UTC

Looks like throwing bill collectors and lawyers at people that don't owe money, or fully paid their bills is the big growth industry right now.

Between this report, and all the reports I've seen of AFNI try to collect (and harrassing if they refuse to pay) paid Verizon accounts...

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/31/6553/40643

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/258/RipOff0258146.htm

It appears the way Corporate America's new growth industry is demanding people pay bills that are already paid, or never owed in the first place, and harrassing them if they refuse.

Re: Designer gets accused of stealing his own work and billed $18,000

#45

Post by adldesigner » Tue, Apr 07, 2009, 3:13 PM UTC

troels wrote: post #29

mechanical_fish wrote: post #8

So the big question is: I've invented a logo. Where do I submit it, along with my identifying information, in order to get a certification (backed up by something that will hold up in court, like a notary's signature) that I uploaded and claimed it on a specific date? One obvious answer is "The US Copyright Office": http://www.copyright.gov/eco/index.html But that's $35 per registration. Seems like one of those onlin…

As a designer, you usually have lots of sketches and early version lying around, as well as high resolution versions of the logo. That alone should work as proof that you are the creator. Otherwise I guess you could e-mail a copy of your logo to your self. If it's a big provider (such as g-mail), the timestamps would be fairly reliable in a court room. Flickr is probably just as good.

As a designer, I can copy sketches or make high resolution versions of any logo and claim them as my own pretty easily. That would not work as proof that I'm the creator.

I believe metadata on the files can help. -I'm no lawyer though- or emailing a copy of the logo to yourself like you said.

Re: Designer gets accused of stealing his own work and billed $18,000

#46

Post by voidpointer » Tue, Apr 07, 2009, 9:24 PM UTC

There are a few interesting links to the artwork that is obviously showing up in other designer's work on StockArt.com and Jon Engle's work at reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/8ac0q/designer_g...

It's not clear who came up with what first. However, the other designers submissions seem to be consistent with their general style while there is not so much consistency in Jon's style. There are no upload dates though on the StockArt.com stuff. This might be fishy...

Re: Designer gets accused of stealing his own work and billed $18,000

#47

Post by voidpointer » Tue, Apr 07, 2009, 9:58 PM UTC

voidpointer wrote: post #46

There are a few interesting links to the artwork that is obviously showing up in other designer's work on StockArt.com and Jon Engle's work at reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/8ac0q/designer_g... It's not clear who came up with what first. However, the other designers submissions seem to be consistent with their general style while there is not so much consistency in Jon's style. There are no uploa…

There is a bit more background on "the other side" of this story with some more examples: http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/stock-logo...