[Commons-l] proposed policy - Commons:Trademarks

Thu Sep 7 16:45:08 UTC 2006

On 9/6/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/09/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Pictures of living people also have restrictions on them.  In some
> > jurisdictions, there is in fact no way for any model release or
> > contract to remove all restrictions; the person depicted still has
> > some rights over the image.  Pictures which contain living people even
> > incidentally are also restricted, especially if no model release or
> > contract has been signed.  The picture as a whole is PROBABLY legally
> > non-problematic, but if cropped down to show only a person or group as
> > the main subject would be a problem.
>
> Yes... well probably it would do no great harm to have much stronger
> requirements with regards to model releases and the like. I don't
> think policy on this area is complete. Morally we have more of a
> responsibility to develop something watertight here, but from a legal
> perspective trademarks seem more dangerous to me due to large
> companies' deep pockets (and attraction to the courts).
>
Dangerous how?  Do you know of any cases where an encyclopedia was
sued for violating trademark law when it included a trademarked image
in one of its articles?  Are there any trademark holders threatening
to sue Wikimedia for trademark infringement, in cases where the
copyright status is clear?

What about the forks and mirrors?  Have any of them complained that
*they* were getting threatened over trademark issues?

I don't know the answer to these questions, so maybe it is a problem
and I just don't know about it.  If it is a problem (dangerous from a
legal perspective), then we should be talking about banning
trademarked images from all Wikipedias, not just from Wikimedia
Commons.  If it isn't a problem, then I see no reason for a new
policy.

I've decided to modify my suggestion slightly: "If an image is useable
under the rules of the majority of Wikimedia projects, then it can be
in commons.  Otherwise, it can't."  I suspect the difference between
"the majority of" and "all" is minor, but this removes some corner
cases (maybe French Wikipedia is especially paranoid about lawsuits
over photos of buildings, for instance).

Anthony