Rights: Trademark Representation

Certain photographs submitted to Fotolia are not accepted because they contain company trade marks and intellectually property which are strictly regulated by the patent laws. To help inform you about trademarks and intellectual property Fotolia suggests the following advice, precautions, and solutions regarding trademarks before submitting photographs to Fotolia.

What is a trade mark?

Intellectual Property defines trade marks as a likely sign of chart being used to distinguish the products or services from a person or entity.

A mark can be represented by various means such as:

• A figure (1664 ™)
  
• A word or group
  
• A sign (rafters of citrôen ™)
  
• A logo (logo of Fotolia ™)
  
• A slogan, a neologism, a name patronymic
  
• A drawing/illustration (mark of the crocodile Lacoste ™)
  
• A color (Kodak™ film packaging)
  
• A 3d representation (Renault ™ logo or Perrier ™ bottle )
  

Precautions to be taken

Fotolia refuses all images containing the representation of trademarks, it does not matter the means of this representation (see list above). Sometimes a trademark is captured by mistake into an image; you thus must to be vigilant in particular when you submit:

• Images of people wearing clothes with trade marks (like Nike™)
  
• Images of objects or food of daily newspapers
  
• Images of cars, sport materials, or vehicles of any kind
  
• Images in general comprising of trademarks in some form that it is
  

Solutions suggested

In order not to interfere with the legal trademark rights, is recommended to photographers:

• 1 To choose objects that do not represent a company’s trademark
  
• 2 To remove the trademarks of the objects photographed (Attention the design of the object may even be protected)
  
• 3 If a mark appears discreetly, edit your photograph to make it disappear (not to forget to specify that the photograph has been edited when you submit the image to Fotolia)
  

We invite each photographer to take responsibility and respect trademark laws, patent rights, and intellectually property.

The next article will discuss the laws pertaining to illustrations and models deposited (like design of a computer, a train, a building...).

Technorati Tags : brand |

Posted by chad on 12:02, April 14 2005

Legal Issues Email to a friend Print Version

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.fotolia.com/mt-tb2.cgi/282