Is it trademark infringement if you put the word &#39;the&#39; in front? There is a trademarked company by the name &quot;good vibe tribe&quot;, registered for &quot;Hosting an online community web site featuring the bringing of people together for the common good and challenges them to do good deeds in their community&quot;. Is &quot;the good vibe tribe&quot; sign different enough to be legally sold on my print on demand business merch?
No Minor changes to trade marks are still the same trade mark.
&quot;Swiss Army Knife&quot; is indeed a trademark. Indeed, it is a very special trademark, because after the last of the Geneva Conventions was adopted, the use of the Swiss insignia used in the Swiss Army Knife's trademarked logo was prohibited except for grandfathered trademarks such as the one you identify. But use of a trademark is infringing only when it is used in connection with the sale of a good or service to imply that the good or service sold is endorsed by or affiliated with the owner of the trademark. In the context you describe, the trademark is not being used in that fashion, and so it is not infringing.
No, it is certainly not legally safe to sell a shirt with such an image printed on it. There are two compatible facts to consider: Wikipedia is correct that the image is not covered by copyright in the United States. The image is likely protected by trademark law, which Wikipedia also notes, directly under the public domain information: This work includes material that may be protected as a trademark in some jurisdictions. If you want to use it, you have to ensure that you have the legal right to do so and that you do not infringe any trademark rights. Copyright Copyright provides a monopoly on the reproduction of creative works, but copyright only applies to sufficiently creative works. In cases such as these, Wikipedia is expressing the opinion that the work in question is too simple or too utilitarian to meet the threshold of originality and/or creativity for copyright. For the U.S. specifically, consider 37 CFR 202.1 which enumerates some categories of work excluded from copyright protection: The following are examples of works not subject to copyright and applications for registration of such works cannot be entertained: (a) Words and short phrases such as names, titles, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering or coloring; mere listing of ingredients or contents; [...] (e) Typeface as typeface. Category (a) excludes the word &quot;Marvel&quot; or &quot;Nirvana&quot; from copyright protection, while category (e) excludes the creative choices that went into the styling of the text. (Note that fonts -- the software that creates/renders a typeface on a page -- are copyrightable in the U.S., but a font's &quot;output&quot; of typefaced text is not similarly protected.) Therefore, in the U.S., that &quot;Marvel&quot; image is likely not copyrightable, since it is just a single word with a particular stylized typeface (the use of which does not make it copyright-eligible either). This may be different from other jurisdictions, some which do recognize the use of the typeface as protectable element under copyright. Trademark Trademark law is a completely distinct area of law that applies to the use of logos, phrases, and other elements to identify a vendor in commerce. The words &quot;Toyota&quot; and &quot;Camry&quot; are not eligible for copyright protection, but the government affords the Toyota Motor Corporation a monopoly on the use of those words to identify the source and model of a car. If you built your own car and tried to attached the name &quot;Toyota Camry&quot; to it without their permission, you would be liable for trademark infringement. Similarly, logos that are too simple to qualify for copyright may still be covered by trademark law, if the company has registered them as trademarks or otherwise uses them distinctively in trade. This is likely the case here. If you put that rectangular Marvel logo on a shirt, you would be misrepresenting your product as being authorized by Marvel Entertainment and be liable for trademark infringement.
I am assuming that you are in the United States for this question. Please correct me if this is not the case. MathWorks still holds the right to take action, which may be anything from cease-and-desist letters up to litigation. You have followed the correct process in asking for permission to use a trademark. The owner of the trademark, MathWorks, has given you their answer, which is quite simply, "no". You may not feel that their reasoning is fair, but the default state of trademarks is that they are under ownership of whomever created them, and you do not have permission to use them. Things will remain that way unless MathWorks changes their mind. It doesn't matter if it feels dismissive of them; they are under no obligation to even consider requests to use their marks. If they didn't explicitly say, "sure, go ahead", or even, "yes, you may use it provided you follow a list of conditions", then using their trademark will be an unlicensed usage. If you still would like to pursue getting permission to use their trademarked assets, you will need to try to contact them again. Until they say otherwise, using their trademarks will be considered unauthorized use. (Edited to add this clarification brought up by @David Siegel): However, your usage might not be violation of trademark. The primary purpose of trademark restriction is to stop someone from misrepresenting a product as being from the entity that owns the trademark; this stops someone from, for example, selling a cola soft drink called "Coke-a-Cola". The reasons for this are manyfold, but the basic idea is that allowing that type of usage means that consumers might not be able to tell that your product is distinct from the original, and could then mistakenly attribute the quality and level of service of the previous brand with the new product. If your usage of MATLAB marks is such that you are identifying the products used as from MathWorks, and not yourself, and are doing everything in good faith to disassociate your website and/or offerings from MathWorks, it is possible that your usage would be considered correct usage of trademark. Even if it is legal usage, MathWorks still may decide to take action. If MathWorks believes that your usage is unauthorized and that it is trademark violation, they may decide to take action. This is regardless of whether it actually is; until you have this case in front of a court, you will not get a definitive answer. We cannot answer whether this is a legal usage of trademark. Ultimately, whether or not a usage of a mark is considered to be correct usage is a question that can only be answered by the courts, which means the only person who can give you concrete advice on a course of action is a lawyer. In lieu of proper legal advice, you will need to weigh the risk of MathWorks taking action against your usage with the benefit you receive from usage. (Edited to add this clarification by @Dale M): Regardless, you may be breaking copyright by using the logo. There is a separate issue besides just trademark at play here. The copyright for the MATLAB logo belongs to whomever created it/owns it (presumably, MathWorks in this case). Using the logo without permission is a copyright violation. The only case in which this would not be a violation is if the logo is released for use in general under a compatible license, such as Creative Commons; do note that these licenses typically have additional conditions, such as requiring attribution. If you are unaware as to whether there is a such a license, or if you fail to follow the terms of the license, usage of the logo almost certainly constitutes copyright infringement.
Yes, you may The layout of the board and its appearance are not protected by copyright, because they are not expressions or any other type of copyrightable content. Even if they were (say if some protested art was displayed on the board) you are displaying this for instructional purposes, and not harming any market for the board, so fair use is likely to apply (in the U.S.). The device could be protected by patent, but you are not copying or imitating the board, nor showing anyone how to do so, so that would not apply. You are not selling or advertising the board, nor knock-offs of it, so trademark protection would not apply, even if a protected trademark is visible on th board. Just in case, be sure to make clear that your video is not authorized or endorsed by the maker of the board.
If such a case came to court, the court would presumably rule that merely publishing the advertising could not be considered to be doing something "commercial". (Otherwise the contract would be absurd, as the question points out.) The court would therefore define "commercial" as some act beyond merely displaying the advertising -- perhaps charging for the website on which it is displayed, or using it to sell goods. Moreover, since the company apparently wrote the contract, any ambiguity in it would be construed against the company, if there is another reasonable interpretation. Thus the contract would not be void, and could be sued on, but the company would win only if it established some conduct that the court was prepared to consider as "commercial" in light of the circumstances and the purpose of the contract. By the way it is not really on point, but it is a common misunderstanding that: some customers may be organized as nonprofit and they're not allowed to make profits Nonprofit entities may do business and make income that would be considered "profit" for an ordinary corporation. What they cannot do is distribute that income as "profit" to owners, shareholders, members, or other individuals.
Disclaimer: I'm from the US and don't claim to know German or Turkish law. So let me discuss some general principles here, but details may well be different in Germany and Turkey. You're mixing together three very different things: trademark, copyright, and patent. Copyright protects the expression of an idea, in this case, the exact computer code, images, etc. If you didn't copy his code, the chance that you would coincidentally write identical code is remote. The fact that you both have a line of code that says x=x+1 wouldn't give him any grounds for a lawsuit. He'd have to show substantial portions of the code were identical. If you didn't deliberately copy his code, this isn't going to happen. Barring some extraordinary and unbelievable coincidence, you can't violate copyright accidentally. Trademark protects names and symbols used to identify a company or a product. If you decided to call your software company "Microsoft", then that other Microsoft could sue you for trademark infringement. Likewise if you copied somebody else's logo or other distinctive graphics. This is very different from copyright. It is quite possible to violate someone's trademark accidentally. Especially if he gave his company or product a rather generic name. Like if someone called his product, say, "Password Manager", someone else might make a product with the same name without ever having heard of the original. Ditto if he has some simple logo or other graphics. If you did accidentally duplicate a name or graphic elements, well, in the US a court would likely order you to change your name or graphics and that would be the end of it, unless you refused, in which case you'd end up in court. US Courts have ruled that very generic names have limited trademark protection. An example I saw recently was "Main Street Auto Repair". A court said that the owner of that name could prevent someone else from opening a shop in the same town with the same name, but he couldn't sue someone in another town who happened to use the same name. This is why, by the way, companies often use made-up words for their product names. In your case, this should be a trivial issue. If he is claiming trademark to the look of the main menu screen, just change the colors or move some buttons around. If it actually went to court, you should be able to argue that the similarity was accidental and when you were informed you promptly changed it, and that should be the end of it. Depending, I guess, on how hard-nosed the judge is, etc. Patents are different still. A patent gives the owner the exclusive right to use an invention or process for a specified period of time. It doesn't matter if you invented the same thing entirely independently. Whoever filed the patent first has exclusive rights. There have been cases where an inventor lost out to someone with a similar invention because he submitted his patent application one day later. If this other person has patents that you are infringing, you are pretty much out of luck.
The purpose of such a statement is to disavow the reading of any impression that the person making the statement is affiliated with the trademark owner, because the gravamen of a trademark infringement suit is that the person using the trademark mislead a consumer into thinking that the person using the trademark was endorsed by or affiliated with the trademark owner.