How risky is modifying the logos of social media sites? A lot of websites have social media buttons, which allows users to share the page on various sites. These buttons use the logos of these sites. Most social media sites don't allow third parties to use altered logo designs, for example Facebook. But even so, I've seen many websites that use slightly modified social media logos, for example IMDb's circular Facebook "f" logo, when the original is a rounded square. I've even seen some more artistic ones, like these or even these. Is this technically copyright infringement? How risky is it to do this? I've seen some very prominent websites use slightly altered logos. Have any ever been sued?
It's more likely a trademark problem than copyright but it's not easy to identify which legal theory the mark owner would use to enforce compliance with their rules. My first thought was initial interest confusion. But if a person sees the logo what are they going to confuse it with? It's not a typical case where an infringing competitor uses the other's trademark to confuse buyers into buying the infringer's goods. Perhaps if buyers are confused they might NOT click a link because they don't recognize it. In this case Facebook loses a click. But they don't have a right that click so that's a stretch also. The misuse they claim is probably dilution. If someone makes a particularly crappy modification it could be argued that this tarnishes the brand. No confusion is needed for dilution, all that is required is that the mark must be "famous" and used by the infringer in way that causes the dilution of the distinctive quality of the mark. This is known as tarnishment. Tarnishment occurs when the plaintiff's trademark is likened to products of low quality, or is portrayed in a negative context. Deere &amp; Co. v. MTD Prods., 41 F.3d 39, 43 (2d Cir. 1994). See Louis Vuitton vs Chewy Vuiton where Louis Vittuon lost when Chewy Vuiton got summary judgment. ...the Federal Trademark Dilution Act (FTDA), 15 U.S.C. § 1125(c)... provides that the owner of a famous mark can enjoin "another person's commercial use in commerce of a mark or trade name, if such use begins after the mark has become famous and causes dilution of the distinctive quality of the mark. But the Supreme Court has held that the dilution statute "unambiguously requires a showing of actual dilution, rather than a likelihood of dilution." Moseley v. Secret Catalogue, Inc., 537 U.S. 418, 433, 123 S. Ct. 1115, 155 L. Ed. 2d 1 (2003) So this requires that messing with logos actually diminishes a brand and that the company can prove it. I don't know of a case where any of these social media companies tried to enforce their rules. I came across a few blog posts about these rules indicating that the authors had contacted the companies, asking about enforcement theories; no social media company had replied to any of those bloggers.
You would want to establish trademark protection on the phrase "Ball Cube": copyright is not generally a good way to protect names or other short phrases. See, for example, Can I copyright the name of my band? from the U. S. Copyright Office, which notes that "names are not protected by copyright law." Furthermore, you're interested in preventing others from selling a similar object using a similar name, and that's precisely what trademark protection is for. The ball cube design would potentially be eligible for copyright protection, but you should be aware that this protection would not extend to elements of its design that originated in Rubik's Cube, because your design would be a derivative work.
If you create a new work that is derived from or based on someone else's work, it is a derivative work, and you cannot do so without permission from the original copyright holder. If the original work is made available under a CC-BY_SA 4.0 license, you have permission, but it comes with conditions. One of those is that you must attribute the original work -- you must say what work yours is based on and who created it. Another is that you must license your own derived work under the same CC-BY-SA license (or a compatible one). This does not mean that your work is not copyrighted -- it is. But it does mean that you must grant to others the same rights that the creator of the work you used granted to you. That is what the "share alike" or SA part of the license means. if you don't like that, you should not use a work licensed under CC-BY-SA terms to create your own work. If you publish your work but fail to grant that license to others, you are infringing the copyright of the work you used, and could be sued. Note that if you had created a compilation rather than a derived work -- for example if you created an album of images from various sources, some of them under CC-BY-SA licenses, you would retain a copyright on the collection as a whole, and that would not have to be under CC-BY-SA. But in this case you say that you used the other person's image as a background for your own illustration. That is creating an "adapted" or derivative work, i am fairly sure, and invokes the share alike clause of the license. You might also want to consider the different case mentioned in If I include an unmodified CC-BY-SA work in a book, does the whole book have to be CC-BY-SA?
Ideas are not protected by copyright, only arrangements of words are protected. If you &quot;rephrase&quot; by only a minor change of wording, leaving much of the wording intact, that is still a copyright infringement unless an exception such as fair use or fair dealing applies (and that seems a bit doubtful in this case). If you &quot;rephrase&quot; so that the wording is quite different, even though the idea is the same, there is probably no infringement. Copying elements of computer code or other IT commands that are essential to making an example work is not infringement. Where there is only one or a very small number of ways to naturally express a fact, copying such expression is not infringement, as facts are not protected by copyright. Adding examples but keeping significant wording unchanged is still likely to be infringement.
If soemoen sues you for infringement of a design copyright, it would be a valid defense that the plaintiff had in fact taken the design elements from your prior work, or indeed from the work of a third party, and so had no valid copyright. Proving this may be easy or hard, depending on the specifics of the situation. Registration will prove that your work existed and you claimed it as original on a specific date. It would not be a perfect defense: if the other party claimed that you had copied prior to that date an infringement action could proceed. The effect of registration is somewhat different in US law and the law of various EU countries. In the US, for one thing, one must register before bringing an infringement suit, and the date of registration may affect the availability of statutory damages, and of an award of the costs and fees for bringing suit. Note that the protection offered by a design copyright is limited: copyright will never protect an ide3a or concept, and so only the specific expression of a design can be protected by copyright. What this means will vary in particular cases. Specific artwork or logos will each carry its own copyright, and if they are original creations of yours, you can register them. (These would not be design copyrights, but ordinary copyrights.) You can also obtain a single registration for the website as a whole. It is very unusual for one who copies a work, or elements of that work, to then sue the original creator for infringement. Given the existence of archive services, it is often fairly easy to prove how a site looked on a particular date. Ensuring that your site has been archived as soon as possible would make it easier to show that it was not copied from a later work. Some services will archive a particular site on request.
When you put a logo that is a legally recognized trademark or servicemark in an acknowledgements section of a document, you are not infringing on the mark. A mark if infringed by someone using it when it is used in a manner that falsely communicates an affiliation with, or an endorsement of, the mark owner of the type of good or service that is protected by the mark. Using a mark in an acknowledgment section doesn't communicate this message (unless, of course, the acknowledgement section falsely says otherwise, which it wouldn't in the case posed by the question). Instead, this use is what is called &quot;nominative use&quot;, and this use also expressly acknowledges and reaffirms that someone else owns the mark and has not licensed it to the author of the work containing the acknowledgement. So, this use of these logos does not infringe on the trademarks or servicemarks that protect these logos.
If you are utilizing the name of the characters just so users can rate them (by rate - I mean rank, review, critique) you should be fine. Copyrights are subject to "fair use" by the public. For purposes such as review, criticism, and comment - this is generally considered to be fair use. Is the site commercial or for-profit? That could impact the analysis, but only if you are making money flowing from the use of the actual copyrighted material(s), rather than advertising (like Adsense) or something similar (this should not suggest that those type sites cannot violate copyright, but it's part of the analysis). If it is something you are investing money into creating, you may want to get a formal legal opinion. But if the site if for fun, or hobby, you are likely fine if what's described is the only use. http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/copyright-fair-use-and-how-it-works-for-online-images/ This link is to a great, easy to read and understand article on fair use, what it is and what it allows. Keep in mind each case is fact intensive, however, from what you are describing this seems fine.
The question mentions copyright, but corporate logos are more often protected by trademark law. There are significant differences in the protections afforded, and in where actions can be brought. Copyright Simple logos may not be subject to copyright protection at all. Individual words and short phrases, such as business names and slogans, are generally not protected. But let us assume that the logo in question is a graphic design of sufficient complexity and originality to be protected by copyright. Copyright offers essentially international protection, and the Berne Convention and the TRIPS agreement ensure that the rules are in many ways similar in almost all countries. One can sue in the copyright owner's jurisdiction, or in any jurisdiction where infringement occurred. If the defendant has a presence in the selected jurisdiction, collection of any damages will be significantly easier. Scenario from the Question If I have understood the question, the logo was originally created by P (or more likely by a designer hired or contracted by P) and P holds the copyright on the logo. But S has obtained the logo via B, presumably at a lower price than P would charge. Neither B nor S, I assume, has permission from P to use the logo. B's action in selling the logo to S would be copyright infringement (unless B independently created an identical or similar logo). S's action in using the logo without permission from P is also copyright infringement. P could sue S, or B, or both in Spain, or in its home jurisdiction (perhaps the US), or in other jurisdictions where the pirated logo had appeared. Actual damages, however, will be limited to the value of the logo (say what P would have charged) plus profits made from the use of the logo. But since S is not selling the logo, it will be hard to determine what part, if any, of its profits derived from the use of that particular logo. That is, how much smaller would its profits have been if it had used a different, non-infringing logo. In the US statutory damages are available, which can be as high as $150,000 per work infringed, if the infringement is proved to be &quot;wilful&quot;. But that is the upper limit of statutory damages, and the judge has wide discretion to set the amount of the award between the upper and lower limits. (The lower limit is $750.) Modified Scenario Suppose that P had sold an exclusive license to U. U is a US-based firm that is actually using the logo to identify its goods, which are distributed world-wide. The actions of B and S have infringed U's licensed rights in the logo, and U could bring suit for copyright infringement, either in the US or in Spain, or perhaps in other countries. But U would have much the same problem as P, it will be hard to prove sizable damages. Which brings us to trademark issues. Trademark Claims Trademark law is usually used to protect words, symbols, and images used to identify products and services being sold or advertised for sale or rental. Unlike copyright, trademark protection does not expire if the mark remains in use. Also, unlike copyright, single words or simple images can be protected. For example, the &quot;red dot in a circle&quot; logo of the Target stores is too simple for copyright protection. But it has strong protection as a trademark. Trademark protection applies in any case where a reasonable person might be confused as to what the source of the goods (or services) really is. It also applies when the mark's use falsely gives an impression of approval or sponsorship by the trademark holder. Unauthorized use of a mark to benefit from the goodwill or reputation associated with the original product or its makers is infringement. Trademark protection, however, is national. A mark protected in one country may be totally free for use in another country. It is also usually limited to a particular category of use If, say &quot;Scarlet O'Hara's&quot; is used as a trademark for a restaurant chain, the use of &quot;Scarlet O'Hara's&quot; for an anti-virus program is not likely to constitute infringement. Copyright has no such limitations. In some countries there is no protection for a trademark unless it is registered. In other countries, use alone can establish a trademark. The US allows protection without registration, although registration brings stronger protection. Also, trademarks can only be protected when they are actually being used &quot;in trade&quot;, that is, to identify or advertise goods or services, or for a limited time while a product is being developed and there is a declared intent to use the mark in the near future. Lack of use or cessation of previous use can cause a mark to lose protection. Scenario from the Question P is selling logos, not using them to identify or market products. Thus it is not using the logo in trade, and has no trademark claim. It cannot sue anyone for trademark infringement, because it has no trademark rights. Modified Scenario (see above) U is using the logo as a trademark world-wide. If it has registered the logo in Spain, or taken such other steps as Spanish law requires, it can perhaps sue S for trademark infringement. It has no trademark claim against B, because B did not use the trademark to identify any goods or services. For a successful suit agaisnt S, U would need to show that confusion between U's products and those of S had actually occurred, or was likely. It would need to show that the products where the logo was used were of a sufficiently similar nature. But if it prevailed, damages could be based on the value of the trade identified by the logo. If S did not sell or market its products outside of Spain, it could only be sued for trademark infringement in Spain. If U did not sell in the Spanish market (or perhaps the wider EU market) it would have no trademark claim. If S started importing its products using the logo into the US, U would have a claim under US trademark law. Thus the details of what logo is used, where and how, and on what products would matter to any trademark claim.