Is it legal to use icons from other companies in my app? For all intents and purposes, if I were to develop an app that provides a service relating to already existing services, how legal would it be to download and use the third party's icons in my app? Several examples to illustrate my point: A trading platform - Displaying the icons which represent the companies (I.E. The Amazon logo for AMZN) A public transportation app - Displaying the icons of various bus/rail/metro lines (Operated by private companies with their own copyrighted logos). A password manager - Displaying the icons which represent the websites (I.E. the Google logo for Gmail accounts). A TV guide app - Displaying icons which represent the various channels on TV (I.E. the ESPN logo for the ESPN stream). A remote app - Displaying logos of various TV manufacturers. A similar question was asked here but unfortunately not all companies have a brand identity page with such guidelines.
A company's or brand's logo is often protected as a trademark. It may also be protected by copyright, unless it is so simple as not to be subject to copyright protection, unlike a name, which is normally not protected by copyright. But trademark protection is likely to be more important for the kind of use described in the question. One may not, in general, use a trademark without permission in such a way as to suggest that a product or service comes from the trademark owner when it does not, or is sponsored, endorsed, or approved by the trademark owner when it is not. One may also not use a trademark or any similar mark in such a way that consumers my reasonably be confused, thinking that the marked product or service is the one for which the trademark is normally used. This is know as passing off. In some counties a trademark is only protected if it is registered with the government. in others, like the US, some protection is granted simply on use of the mark, although registration may grant additional protections. Nominative Use It is, in most countries, permitted to use a trademark to refer to the product or service represented by the mark, without permission. This is known as nominative use, because the mark is used as the name of the product or service. Statements such as Our cola has half the calories of PeppyCola. Our GreatBattery is compatible with a Pear28 cellphone. However, valid nominative use usually requires using as little of the trademark as possible. In the US at least, this has been interpreted to mean that it is permitted to use the word or words which constitute the name of the product or service to be referred to, but not the logo or other graphic mark for that product or service. The uses mentioned in the question seem like nominative uses, and it should be fine to use thew name or text representation of the service to be linked to. For example &quot;Buy on Amazon&quot; might be the text of a link to an amazon page from a page advertising a book or other item. But using the amazon graphic logo probably requires permission. Stock Symbols Note that stock symbols are text, not graphics. Moreover, in registering with a stock exchange, I believe that a company explicitly permits the stock symbol to be used to represent the stock, so the trading platform example is a bit different from the other examples. However, use of graphic logos on a trading platform would have the4 same possible issues as other logo uses. Permission In many cases online companies routinely grant limited permission to use their logos to indicate links to their sites, or compatibility with their products. In other cases they may be willing to grant such permission on request. Any use covered by such permission is lawful, But only to the limits of the permission granted. any use beyond that would need to be justified by an exception to trademark protection, such as nominative use. Permission would normally cover copyright as well as trademark issues. Copyright Use of a logo protected by copyright without permission. would also be copyright infringement, unless an exception to copyright applies. In the US fair use is the most common exception, and would probably apply to most of the kinds of uses described in the question, which do not harm the market for the original copyrighted work, and fit the other fair use factors. In other countries, there are various exceptions to copyright which may apply, including &quot;fair dealing&quot;. The exact scope of these exceptions will vary from country to country. Again, obtaining permission will prevent any such problems.
Apple has rules for publishing apps on the App Store, and either you follow the rules, or your app won't go on the App Store, simple as that. What you do is either not put your app on the App Store, or make the changes they ask you to make. Why are there conflicting statements? Because Apple and Google are different companies. Does Apple ask the other company? No, why would they spend their time on this, when they can ask you to make the changes? In the end, Apple has huge pockets, so they are not going to approve anything that might give a company a way to take money out of their pocket. What you want to do sounds very much like it could give some company a pretext to sue Apple; that's one thing that Apple won't let happen.
Yes it would be legal to do so. A full analysis would look at trademark law (where the bottom line is that the use of the Coke mark is not misleading since you are selling bona fide Coke), and copyright law. Whether it was non-infringing or fair use, is a closer call, but there is little doubt that one way or the other, this would be legal.
Yes, if you do not use the trademarked name. In the U.S. the graphical shape of fonts are not protected by copyright. See 37 CRF section 202.1 Typefaces are specifically excluded. Excluded are under (a) &quot;mere variations of typographic ornamentation,&quot; and (e) &quot;Typeface as typeface.&quot; The computer code that a font/typeface program uses to produce the shapes can be copyright. Importantly, fonts are protected by their trademarked names.
&quot;Any perceived compliance or non-compliance of other developers’ apps does not have any bearing on the compliance of your own apps.&quot; Could this mean that Google Play's policies are applied differently for different developers or apps? No, it means that you can't break the rules even if others are breaking the rules or you think they are breaking the rules. I think it is worth noting that those apps are for the Indian market. I don't know which one you are in, but google will have different rules for different countries to comply with various regulatory requirements.
If you are using just the names, there is no issue - you can't copyright a fact. If you are using actual images (you appear to say you are not, but you also asked "Am I allowed to include images of Google Maps) - then the answer is still yes within your usage case - provided you attribute them to Google. If you look at this link it specifies that you are OK to use this in Reports and Presntations, Books which are not guidebooks and which have less then 5000 copies and presentations. If you are using them online, you need to use the imbedded versions (ie you can't just screenshot them - you need to link to them). If you are still unsure, you can contact streetview-academic@google.com to request specific permission.
As usual with trademarks, the key question is "will reasonable people be confused about the source or affiliations of the product or service". Trademarks are, as you already know, limited to a particular industry or area of business, in general. Displaying user videos is not exactly the same thing as a particular popular song, but they just might be close enough for some consumer confusion tom occur. Whether reasonable people are in fact confused into thinking that the app is in some way sponsored by the makers of the song is a question of fact. A trademark suit would probably need to present some sort of evidence that confusion had occurred or was likely. It also may make a difference whether "Tik Tok" has been registered as a trademark. In the US, registration gets greater protection than mere use. (In some countries there is no protection without registration.) It is also possible that the app has already licensed the rights to the term from the trademark owner for the song. This would avoid a potential suit. It is also worth noting that the term "Tik Tok" is not original with the song. It dates back, in that spelling, to at least the "Oz" books by L. Frank Baum and others Tik-Tok of Oz dates from 1914, and the character of the Tik-Tok from the book Ozma of Oz (1907). Terms that are not original coinages are less strongly protected in trademark law, and the app could claim to be alluding to the Oz character, not the more recent song. A comment by ub3rst4r says that: the term "Tik Tok" is registered as a trademark in the USA by "Bytedance Ltd" (which is the company that operates the app). If that is correct, the US Patent and Trademark office (PTO) came to at least a preliminary conclusion that this trademark did not infringe anyone else's trademark. That doesn't meant that an infringement suit is doomed, but it would make any such suit harder and less likely. It seems that, as described in this news story a company selling watchs under the name "Tic Tok" was sent a cease and desist letter on behalf of the singer Kesha Sebert. The firm responded by filing a suit for a declaratory judgement. The case is Wimo Labs LLC v. Kesha Sebert, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, No. 1:11-cv-02978. However, google does not show any resolution of this case, one way or the other. This was brought to my attention in a comment by StephanS. As this docket record shows, the case was dismissed by agreement without prejudice, apparently after a settlement (as stated in the comment by user muru). Thus there was no ruling on the merits of the case.
Yes. This is a frequently asked question on the foundation's homepage, and answered without ambiguity (source): Can I use a Raspberry Pi in a commercial product? This is a very common question, and the answer is yes! Once you have bought a Raspberry Pi, it's yours to do with as you wish. You would be in good company too, as in fact the Raspberry Pi is regularly used and sold for commercial applications third parties. Note that this the default consequence of a contract of sale in all jurisdiction I know of (but I am not a lawyer): The seller does not retain property rights in the particular item, and by the mere selling of the item implies there are no other rights that might prevent the buyer from using it as they wish. Apart from the particular computer now in your property, there are other legal requirements: &quot;Copyleft&quot; softweare: Large parts of the Raspbian software are licensed under &quot;copyleft&quot; licenses (importantly, versions of the General Public License, GPL). These licenses are meant to provide your customers with the means of reproduciing and building upon the &quot;copylefted&quot; software. You will need to provide your customers with the source code to those software items, the tools and documentation needed for building, and a written notice. Your own programs need not be licensed under a &quot;copyleft&quot; license, provided that you don't build on (distribute &quot;derative works&quot; of) &quot;copyleft&quot; software. The open source licenses involved are not meant to exclude commercial use, and there are helpful compliance guides available ( a, b ). Non-free software: Make sure to not include non-free software, like Mathematica or Oracle Java, which are not licensed for commercial redistribution. Trademarks: Your use of the words &quot;Raspberry PI&quot; or the raspberry logo is subject to restrictions, as is usual with trademarks. Speaking of the logos: You can request permission to use their &quot;powered by Raspberry Pi&quot; logo. Market regulations: You need to abide by regulations, for example safety and electromagnetic interference. Repackaging the Pi might mean you'll need to test and recertify your product, I'm not an expert. Video codecs: Some Raspberry Pis (up to 3) include specialised video decoding hardware. If you want to use it with the MPEG2 codec, you'll have to buy an activation key for small one-time fee per device - £2.40 for MPEG2, £1.20 for VC-1; other codecs are already activated. I don't think you'll need a license even for commercial, for-sale devices, but I am not your lawyer. Just to be clear, nothing prevents your buyers from cloning your software. (This is not a consequence of you providing the Raspbian source code - they can just clone the contents of your SD card.) While you can retain copyright in your own code, you'll probably have no effective means of detecting infringement. However, the physical design of the rest of your device will not be affected. Your business model needs to account for this fact.