[OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] PDF icon: licensing concern & fix

[Tony Sebro]

On 05/25/2012 10:11 AM, Dan Scott wrote:
> On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 08:45:42AM -0400, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
>>> On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 08:22:49PM +0000, Lazar, Alexey Vladimirovich wrote:
>>>> Maybe I'm missing something, but neither GNOME nor KDE icons use that
>>>> symbol.
>> Dan Scott replied at 02:34 (EDT):
>>> Yes, I think you're missing that the design of KDE's PDF icon [1] and
>>> the Dropline Etiquette theme PDF icon [2] both appear to be derived
>>> from Adobe's PDF icon [3],
>> I don't think we actually have explicit reason to believe those icons
>> are copyright derivative works of the Adobe icons, but they *may* be and
>> it's clear we'd want to investigate that question more before using
>> them.
> Really? I can't imagine where, other than the original Adobe PDF logo
> itself, both the Dropline Etiquette and KDE Oxygen icon designers would
> have found the inspiration to create a red loopy "A" to represent a PDF
> document. But... my imagination is pretty limited.
>
>>> Tony -- who is a lawyer, BTW -- said a few posts back: "I don't think
>>> this would qualify as fair use, because the value of this icon file is
>>> derived from its use of Adobe's trademark."
>> Indeed, the primary issue that Tony raised was that of whether use of
>> those icons might constitute trademark infringement.  Tony can speak
>> more to the issue of how a trademark infringement analysis works, but I
>> trust his opinion that we should err on the side of caution.
> Right. Realistically, Evergreen is unlikely to be a primary target of a
> trademark infringement action, even if Adobe starts freaking out about
> trademark dilution along the lines of Penguin [1], but the reward for
> taking the risk of being such a target amounts to the use of an icon.
> Even at a very low risk, that seems like a very low reward...
>
Agreed on all counts.
>> BTW, Dan, as a side note, you mentioned that the GNOME icon you showed us
>> wasn't the canonical GNOME one, but rather a community-developed
>> alternative to the GNOME defaults.
>>
>> Have you looked at what the default icon is in GNOME 3 for PDFs?  I'd
>> guess that one doesn't infringe Adobe's trademark nor copyrights and we
>> could use that.
> Yes. GNOME 3.4.0 doesn't use a specific icon for PDFs; it uses a generic
> "office document" icon [2] (text flowing around a graphic on a portrait
> page). This matches what I see in Fedora 16, too.
>
>> While I think your icon with just the letters PDF is probably fine (I'd
>> like Tony to confirm, of course), perhaps there is something out there
>> from another Free Software project that's prettier and doesn't have any
>> of these trademark issues.
> I think I would dissolve into madness if putting Deja Vu Sans "PDF" on a
> white background is still a problem for the project. But okay, I'm happy
> to wait for word back from Tony. In the meantime, should we just remove
> the PDF icon altogether and replace it with a text link?
>
Yes, Dan, your mock-up of a graphic (the letters "PDF" in red on a white 
background) is fine.  :)

-- 
Tony Sebro, General Counsel, Software Freedom Conservancy
+1-212-461-3245 x11
tony at sfconservancy.org
www.sfconservancy.org