Commons:Deletion requests/Two British logos

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This deletion discussion is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive. You can read the deletion policy or ask a question at the Village pump. If the circumstances surrounding this file have changed in a notable manner, you may re-nominate this file or ask for it to be undeleted.

TwoThree British logos[edit]

Note that both logos are from the UK. The British definition of threshold of originality differs from that of the United States. The Edge logo was found to be protected by copyright in the United Kingdom by England and Wales High Court[1][2]. The Stansted logo looks more complex than the Edge logo, so if the Edge logo is copyrighted, the Stansted logo is presumably also copyrighted. See also the related discussion at Commons:Village pump/Copyright#New upload.

Stefan4 (talk) 12:44, 21 December 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Strange decision of the court in the case of the EDGE logo. IMO it clearly qualifies for {{PD-textlogo}}. If it gets deleted here, it will be restored in de.wikipedia. --Leyo 13:33, 21 December 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I agree on that – if I hadn't seen the court ruling, I would have assumed that it is one of the most obvious cases of a {{PD-textlogo}}. However, we can't go against a court in the country of origin. There is also Commons:When to use the PD-signature tag#UK which tells that we need to be extremely careful with any text typeset in the United Kingdom. --Stefan4 (talk) 14:57, 21 December 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
 Delete Yes, a bit surprising, but the UK has a very low threshold of originality (they define that term differently than most every other country, other than former UK colonies). The ruling did hint that a pure text logo in a standard font would not be copyrightable, but the stretching of the font and the alteration of the "E"s was enough in that judge's mind to qualify for copyright. I don't think it would qualify in the U.S. and certainly not Germany, but there is precedent for that very low threshold in the UK. The Stansted logo might have been OK except for the graphic. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The fair use tag was the original copyright licence for the image. Cloudbound (talk) 14:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, but that doesn't mean that it is the best way of doing it. Fair use rationales are only, as far as I can tell, to be used on English Wikipedia if an image is copyrighted in the United States, which isn't the case with this logo. Compare with images which are out of copyright because of age in the United States but not in the source country. As far as I know, they don't get any fair use rationale but only templates saying that it is a public domain image which should not be moved to Commons. --Stefan4 (talk) 14:56, 31 December 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  •  Question: Does anyone know of other court cases similar to the Future Publishing Ltd v. Edge Interactive Media Inc. mentioned in the nomination? In the Edge case, the defendant had a rather standoffish relationship with the truth; I am not very familiar with the culture of the British courts, and so I cannot tell whether, perhaps, the judge was taking a rather comprehensive position towards removing the defendant's hope for any later appeal. Are there other court cases where logos, of similarly minimal labor as the Egde logo, were held to be copyrightable? A second court decision would probably put this to rest. --Closeapple (talk) 09:22, 2 January 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • I'm not an expert on British lawsuits and I agree that the fact that forged evidence (a floppy disc with contents created using Windows 95 in 1991) was used looks suspicious, but I don't think that the outcome looks too strange. British signatures are already banned on Commons and this logo doesn't look too different to a standard signature in terms of originality, labour and skill. --Stefan4 (talk) 13:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • That is a fair point -- the judge was probably predisposed to rule against any argument brought up by the defendant in that case ;-) When it comes to graphic works though, it seems the UK has always had about the lowest threshold out there -- a "skill, judgment, and labour" test (i.e. sweat of the brow is often taken into consideration). They also seem to use "original" in the sense that something has not been seen before, rather than in a sense which implies some creativity (though it may be possible that some newer cases have backed off those old precedents -- Australia, which uses much the same language in its laws, granted copyright to the aboriginal flag. So, I'm not sure the ruling was all that far out of bounds. On the other hand, the UK Supreme Court recently ruled that the Star Wars stormtrooper helmets were articles of industrial design, protected for 25 years, and not sculpture (Lucasfilm lost that case). Canada, per the w:CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada ruling, seems to be somewhere in between even though it also inherited the UK copyright law. It would be good to find as many as such similar cases as possible, particularly recent ones. Carl Lindberg (talk) 18:31, 14 January 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • What decision have we come to regarding the two images included in this request? Cloudbound (talk) 15:54, 18 January 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  •  Delete as copyvio. Odd but law is law and we have to follow it. Artem Karimov (talk) 07:48, 25 January 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  •  Keep I would be quite concerned if we delete such simple logos because of copyright. To me, it is similar to the {{PD-Art}} issue: there is a threshold beyond which we declare that we don't accept copyright claims. Yann (talk) 06:58, 2 February 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    If the court of law handed down the decision, we must obey whether we like or not. Our licensing policy is pretty much clear that image has to be PD both in the US and the country of origin. Artem Karimov (talk) 13:25, 2 February 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      • Also note that COM:L only gives an exception for {{PD-Art}} but not for {{PD-textlogo}}. If you want an exception for {{PD-textlogo}}, I think that COM:L would have to be changed first. This is not really any different from {{PD-signature}} which is valid for US signatures but not for British signatures and it would make sense to handle both in the same way. British signatures are only allowed if the signatory died at least 70 years ago and I think that the same should apply to British logos unless it can be proven to be below the British threshold of originality. The instructions at {{PD-textlogo}} states that a logo must consist only of simple shapes and/or text which is below the threshold of originality, but the Edge logo has artistic originality per the High Court of Justice: "I have already said that I accept Mr Williams's evidence that he created the EDGE Logo for the claimant and that it has artistic originality." The Stansted logo is more complex than the Edge logo, so if the Edge logo is complex, so is the Stansted logo. --Stefan4 (talk) 14:26, 2 February 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    {{PD-Art}} is a special policy (and is labeled as policy), and requires specific criteria because, by its own explanation, it's a special exception to another policy. This differs from simpler questions of originality in this deletion discussion:
    • The policy that allows {{PD-Art}} is explained at Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag#The position of the WMF and is designed to disarm those who attempt to convert an existing public domain work to their own exclusive use. The PD-Art policy exists to prevent a hyporcrite from making a direct copy of an author's work, then using it to claim copyright on the work that not even the original artist has anymore. Usually, this same "controller" then limits access to the public domain work itself, either keeping it hidden, or claiming that anyone that gets close enough to view it has somehow agreed not to copy it, so that the only public distribution of the work is through derivative copies that the controller claims copyrights (and charges money) for. PD-Art does not apply when the main artist's copyright is still active; the holders of the original artist's copyright can prohibit the derivative, so that anyone with exclusive physical access must respect the artist's copyright as well.
    • The British logo question is about whether a new work is, itself, original enough for the artist to retain copyright. See, for example, Commons:Deletion requests/PD ineligible signatures. The Commons policy in these cases is the usual one, Commons:Licensing: "Wikimedia Commons accepts only media that are explicitly freely licensed, or that are in the public domain in at least the United States and in the source country of the work."; Commons:Licensing#Interaction of United States copyright law and non-US copyright law: "either in the public domain or covered by a valid free license in both the U.S. and the country of origin of the work". That section also notes that the only exception is the PD-Art policy.
    All of that being said: I could imagine there might eventually be cases in which we have to decide how much originality is required before a British reproduction of a public domain work becomes original enough that PD-Art doesn't apply. But that, fortunately, is not relevant to this deletion discussion: The works discussed here are works that, quite the contrary to being attempts at copyrighting duplicates, are (in theory) designed by the author to not be confused with prior works. --Closeapple (talk) 01:28, 3 February 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  •  Delete: Since this is probably going to cause most British logos on Commons to be deleted or transferred to English Wikipedia for a fair-use tag, I was hoping for more detailed cases from Britain. However: Future Publishing Ltd v. Edge Interactive Media Inc. is a real court ruling; nobody has presented evidence that the ruling is particularly out of line for Britain; and a couple people have even given evidence that the ruling is not unusual, and applies to, for example, British signatures as well. So I'm satisified that the Edge logo (and therefore the Stanstead Airport logo, which is more complex) is what Britain considers original enough to retain the copyright. Commons:Licensing policy is clear: the work must be "in the public domain in at least the United States and in the source country of the work." And, it's not an attempt to re-copyright a straightforward copy of another author's work, so it doesn't meet the exception policy in {{PD-Art}}. --Closeapple (talk) 01:28, 3 February 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • To show that deleting such simple logos cannot be based on a sound reasonable argument, I recreated the EDGE logo. My version is not a derivative of the original, since it is bigger and also different (check with a diff). Yet the apparence is quite the same: File:EDGE logo test.svg. Disclaimer: since I am a complete newbie for creating this kind of work, if I can make it, it is quite a proof that it has no originality, therefore no copyright. Yann (talk) 19:14, 14 February 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • Your logo is of course a derivative work of the original logo since you looked at the original one before making your variant. British people think that the Edge logo has originality, so there is nothing that we can do but to delete it. What matters here is not so much that the SVG code differs but that the final result looks the same. Since both logos are SVG, both can be resized to any size and so they can be resized so that they have the same size. --Stefan4 (talk) 21:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • This is SO ridiculous. Court decision has been handed down. If you do not agree with that argue with the court. Before that these image can only be fair use. P.S. No, this is not a legal threat but rather cry of sanity. Artem Karimov (talk) 17:23, 15 February 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • Even though I wish it weren't so, a judge, who knows more about British copyright law than we do, says it's sound copyright for the UK; and not only that, but he seems to have addressed this issue directly, against a Brit who moved to the U.S. (Langdell, the defendant) who also claimed it wasn't sufficiently original for copyright after he re-created it:

      Dr Langdell submitted that the claimant can have no copyright in its EDGE logo because it is not original over the Franklin Gothic typeface. I do not accept this submission. The stretching of the font was combined with the distinctive slash and projection on the middle bar of the "E". What is required for artistic originality is the expenditure of more than negligible or trivial effort or relevant skill in the creation of the work: see Copinger and Skone James on Copyright 16th Ed at 3-130 and Ladbroke v. William Hill [1964] 1 WLR 273 at 287. The claimant's logo is original within this test.

      If you can memorize a small Maya Anjelou poem and write it down again in less time than it took to recreate the Edge logo, that still doesn't make it too simple for copyright; it is the law that determines originality, and therefore copyright, and therefore whether the work is freely copyable, for Commons purposes. Absent the narrow exception of {{PD-Art}} (preventing already determined public-domain works being subjected to new restrictions), Commons policy (which is different than en.wiki) is to respect both copyright in the original country and the U.S. — even, for example, when the U.S. doesn't even have copyright treaties with the original country. It is possibly Template:PD-ineligible-USonly on English Wikipedia (see en:Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights), but disallowed on Commons. --Closeapple (talk) 00:39, 16 February 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Move all to en-wp and delete from Commons. As with the URAA restoration, we must follow legal decisions, even ones as silly as this. Since en-wp considers only US copyright status, these will be considered PD there, and should be marked as such (and ineligible for Commons), as discussed above. cmadler (talk) 20:34, 29 February 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    •  Comment With the exception of Yann's Edge logo, the image are already on English Wikipedia. It would be necessary to restore the Edge logo on German Wikipedia and maybe copy the Edge logo to Hungarian Wikipedia and the Stansted logo to Vietnamese Wikipedia (I don't know their image policies). --Stefan4 (talk) 20:56, 29 February 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Delete File:Stansted Airport logo.png from Commons per the wording of the Do not move to Commons template on the copy on the English Wikipedia: "This image is believed to be non-free or possibly non-free in its home country, the United Kingdom. In order for Commons to host a file, it must be free in its home country and in the United States. Some countries, particularly other countries based on common law, have a lower threshold of originality than the United States." The logo is unfree in the UK. Cloudbound (talk) 12:42, 3 April 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • It was moved there with that wording because of this DR -- so you are basically saying to delete this file just because it was nominated. Secondly, many folks put logos on the Wikipedias without knowing if they pass the threshold of originality or not, so they just put a "fair use" tag on it. The decision really needs to be based on whether this passes the threshold of originality or not, and little else. There is a court decision, although in another recent case, an EU court overturned an old UK threshold-of-originality ruling (really the sweat of the brow provisions),[3] so this ruling may not be set in stone -- although, that EU ruling was on entirely different subject matter. Carl Lindberg (talk) 14:23, 3 April 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
      • That's not what I'm saying. If it was, I would have written it. According to the template in use for the logo on English Wikipedia, the file shouldn't be here. That's why I think it should be deleted. Cloudbound (talk) 15:20, 3 April 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
        • In either case, the template was added there because of this discussion. The template being there does not add anything to the information already contained in the discussion on this page. --Stefan4 (talk) 15:24, 3 April 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
          • Stefan, you added the template. Looking at it, it suggests the copy shouldn't be here if that template is used correctly. Surely after all this discussion we can come to some form of conclusion on what to do with these images? Cloudbound (talk) 18:24, 3 April 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]
            • It's on en-wiki pre-emptively in case it gets deleted here. If this ends up being kept, then that copy may be deleted, though it could be kept there as a precaution. The wording there really has no bearing here, unless the reason behind it has not been brought up here yet. Carl Lindberg (talk) 19:32, 3 April 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Deleted: While Stansted Airport logo was a bit too elaborate to consider it under the threshold of originality, the Edge logos could be safely considered PD-Textlogo. But as precautionary measure, since during the discussion has been stated that British courts are rather strict on this matter and it can be considered an original logo, then we can't assume that's safe to be published here. -- Blackcat (talk) 15:15, 4 April 2012 (UTC) BlackcatReply[reply]

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