[theme-reviewers] Trademarked /copyrighted logos bundled in themes

[Bryan Hadaway]

"P.S. Just imagine if they made special restrictions on this, it would be
extremely hard to promote their services and there's also some type of
"gray" area, but we shouldn't worry about that."

That's the best point on the subject. They WANT you to use their logos and
tap into their services. This builds their brand image. And even if some
massive service like AddThis managed to screw up and make a really ugly,
unflattering Facebook icon for example, if anything Facebook might send a
friendly email suggesting sharper looking logos. But, AddThis brings them
traffic in the millions and they wouldn't want to lose that asset.

On the other end, if some theme author released a theme with custom made
social icons that were godawful ugly, the idea that some Facebook exec is
going to notice (one in a million) and then take legal action to make you
conform to their logo guidelines would be a huge waste of time and money
for them only to stir up bad PR, because they're going to look like jerks.

It's just unprecedented and it will never happen.


Bryan Phillip Hadaway


Web & Graphic Designer
calmestghost.com
bhadaway at gmail.com


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On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 2:24 AM, Emil Uzelac <emil at themeid.com> wrote:

> This is pretty straightforward. Let's take Twitter for example:
> http://twitter.com/logo
>
> This policy is designed to help you use our brand and assets, including
>> our logo, content and trademarks without having to worry about negotiating
>> a separate agreement with us or talking to our lawyers.
>
>
> But also, icons are in most cases made by third-party, not directly
> associated with Twitter and released under different license (GPL for
> example). Taking both into consideration, we can use their logos and
> distribute in Themes and/or Plugins.
>
> However, this is definitely good question that would lead to this: If you
> go to above URL, you'll notice that just like WordPress, Twitter now will
> give you several example how their brand can be promoted, therefore if the
> logo/icon does not look like what they have in their guidelines, we should
> no longer accept them either. And you can see that here:
> http://a0.twimg.com/a/1344442772/images/resources/twitter-brand-resources-wrong-logos.pngat least that's what I believe, others will weigh in I'm sure.
>
> P.S. Just imagine if they made special restrictions on this, it would be
> extremely hard to promote their services and there's also some type of
> "gray" area, but we shouldn't worry about that.
>
> Emil
>
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 3:04 AM, myazalea at hotmail.com <
> myazalea at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> How is it GPL compatible to add 'social media' company logos in themes
>> and plugins?
>> Images we use in themes must be GPL compatible and Twitter pintrest
>> facebook etc etc have different restrictions on how their logos are to be
>> used.
>>
>>
>>
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>
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