[WikiEN-l] Re: Images on user pages

Fri Sep 16 11:50:46 UTC 2005

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Alphax wrote:
>  
>
>>Well, the Firefox and Wikipedia logos are both copyrighted and
>>trademarked. Recreating them from scratch would at least solve the first
>>issue.
>>    
>>
>That's just wrong.  Recreating them from scratch would not solve the
>first issue at all.
>
>That's like saying that if I type in all of a Harry Potter book from
>scratch, it's no longer copyrighted.
>
>Please, I ask people, don't speculate on legal matters unless and until
>you've learned more about them.
>  
>
The kind of thing that he may be thinking about would only operate in 
very limited circumstances, and not at all in trademarks or patents. 

If two people _independently_ produce identical pieces of work they can 
both have copyright protection, and neither has infringed upon the 
other.  The horde of monkeys who managed to reproduce the Britannica 
would not be infringing because it could probably be proven that they 
did not even know how to read the original work,  Practically, the 
situation is next to impossible in anything but the shortest works.  
Legal cases involving music copying can often hinge on whether the 
alleged infringer had the idea independently.  For Wiktionary it can 
happen when someone independently uses the same definition as appears in 
a published dictionary.  It could be the only plausible or even possible 
definition.

Ec