Is this a copyright/trademark infringement?
By Yahoo User • Category: Trademarks InfringementI am wondering if it would be an infringement of copyright law to copy/paste/print an official team logo for personal use? Everything I have read so far has focused on ‘commercial’ use–reselling, etc., but none of them seem to address the ease of public access to images online and how you can use them personally. There would be no commercial use of the logo, but a third party would be printing the logo on a paper item, which would then be used personally. What are the restrictions for personal use? Any clear/up-to-date info would be helpful.
Technically it is copyright infringement and potentially trademark infringement depending on additional facts. Whether you make money from it or not is generally irrelevant. For example, you could not make copies of a CD and give them away for free. Even though you make no money from giving away CDs, you are still committing copyright infringement.However, as a practical matter, if you are using the logo personally, how would the copyright/trademark owner even find out about your use of the logo? It’s not clear to me what you are concerned about.Edit: Lare, I don’t agree with you about personal use automatically being “fair use”. I don’t know of any rule in copyright law to suggest such a blanket statement. Can you explain your reasoning to me?You appear to say that if the 3rd party printed the logo on the paper item, then there is injury to the rights holder. But if the asker printed the logo on the paper item, then there is no injury to the rights holder. What’s the difference? In both cases, the rights holder is injured because, among other things, the rights holder should be able to create the paper item (i.e. a derivative work) based on the logo.Just to be clear, I don’t want to argue. I’m just trying to understand your reasoning here.
Generally this falls under the catagory of “fair use” which is allowed by the copyright code, but only if you were to do this for yourself. However the involvement of a third party does represent a commercial injury to the rights holder who normally collects a license royalty whenever their logo is printed.