To clarify: I'm not sure trademarks apply to coats of arms at all. The
Paris Convention explicitly exempts at least national insignia from
trademark protection (and, by extension, possibly from copyright).
Most countries have separate laws for protecting insignia from misuse -
which we do indeed not concern ourselves with (see {{insignia}}), as
long as the use on commons itself is legal, and it's possible to legally
use them on some Wikimedia project.
My recollection of that (maybe inaccurately) was that
that came down
to copyright issues, not trademark? A photograph or redrawing of a
logo still infringes its copyright, after all. I don't remember any
of the disputed logos being out of copyright.
As far as I remember, we decided not to have any trademarked logos,
copyrighted or not. Many logos could be considered PD because they are
trivial - in fact, the German WP allows such logos, and is quite liberal
with the interpretation... a dangerous course, IMHO.
I believe I am correct that Commons does not generally
concern itself
that the appearance of a trademarked element in a photographed scene
may make a photograph unusable in some (but not all) commercial
contexts, however.
Yes - logos appearing in a larger context are OK. Just *how* large that
context must be is subject of interpretation... a street scene that
contains some logos somewhere is probably ok. A picture showing nothing
but a Coca Cola can? Not sure about that.
-- Daniel
--
Homepage:
http://brightbyte.de