The World's first Geotar!

[Mr.Yuck]

Since IAAL, I'd note that this is a trademark issue, not a copyright one. Trademarks can get weakened over time if one doesn't defend them and to the extent you are using a trackable subject to their license, I'm sure that license says something about not altering the mark. There's nothing to stop you from drawing a picture of a modified geocaching logo for private purposes or even, under many circumstances, for parody purposes. But using this in connection with their TB, you've agreed not to alter the mark. Now, Groundspeak doesn't *need* to include that language, but once they do they need to be pretty consistent about it or it weakens the mark.

 

Very nice post, thanks. I'm no lawyer, that's for sure. So you say it weakens the mark, and GeoBain even went so far to say you risk losing the trademark if you don't enforce it. What do you guys mean, legally? I'm confused.

 

I've also seen about 200 people using the Android OS logo as their avatar on the internet. I don't see Google going after any of them. I'd almost think of it as free advertising? I don't know, someone needs to enlighten me here.

[7rxc]

In this instance, the problem is with the OP's small 'alteration' not much else. Those Android avatars may not have been altered at all, and thus available under 'fair use'. Note that there would not have been a problem here either but for the alteration being a bit 'too much'. Probably would never have been noticed either, short of the online announcement and then 'fessing' up by the OP.

 

Lots of people here use fudged up avatars using all or part of the logo... is that good? Just for fun last night I was playing with other corporate logos etc. and made up a pretty good facsimile of the usual 4 box with art logo... and none of them were GS.

 

Only used small portions of each to try and stay within the copyright laws... but that was my intent, NOT to violate anything... it only will exist in my computer for now then vanish... I did have to recolour and resize a bit, but didn't use any of the GC logo parts.

Should be noted that it would still get me in hot water for trying to use it in any way, the way things are written, but in doing so, other questions might get asked about the sources... So I'm not going there, as a good participant in general.

 

One thing I noted, being a poor artist compared to some... IF I was doing such a project with any image, I'd be forced to use a projector to throw the image onto the surface for 'tracing' purposes. Even if that image was perfectly unaltered in any way up to that point, the irregular surface it was projected onto would distort the perfect image somewhat, perhaps a lot. How would that situation be interpreted? Apparently one has to use a contiguous flat surface for the image to end up on in it's entirety(?).

That would explain the 'could you use the area over here' part of the response... the result has to match the original.

 

Doug 7rxc

Edited December 17, 2011 by 7rxc

[+wwbd]

I started a new thread for the new version