On Wed, 2003-12-31 at 16:33, Andrew Suffield wrote: > On Tue, Dec 30, 2003 at 03:18:29PM -0800, Ben Reser wrote: > > On Tue, Dec 30, 2003 at 06:04:01PM -0500, Brian T. Sniffen wrote: > > > This has come up before. SPI was asked to look into the trademark > > > violation involved. IIRC, the proprietor of elektrostore was contacted > > > and dismissed the complaint -- saying there wasn't any proof Debian had > > > come up with the swirl either, and it could come from a font or > > > something -- that maybe Debian and the web designer he paid got it from > > > the same source. > > > > Ignore the trademark issue. > > We probably don't have a valid trademark on the swirl anyway; too many > people use swirls. But this one is actually copyright infringement > (unlike, for example, the Sega Dreamcast logo[0] or the Tivola > Publishing[1] logo). > It's only copyright infringement if they took our logo and modified it. I find it equally believable that the Debian swirl we use isn't the original work of the designer, but was taken with permission from elsewhere -- such as a clipart library, just as the font was bought by the designer. Until we have some kind of statement that the swirl was a hand-painted work by the designer, I really think talking about this is a stupid thing to do. (Remember, we've seen a version of our swirl used that would have to have been unrolled and rolled up a different way -- this continues to suggest to me that there's a website of swirls somewhere by one designer available for use; and ours comes from that.) Scott -- Have you ever, ever felt like this? Had strange things happen? Are you going round the twist?
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