Is it legal to take a photo of a logo off an item you have purchased for use onl

1. 85

   oceansnsunsetsposted 10 years ago

   Is it legal to take a photo of a logo off an item you have purchased for use online?
   
   I am speaking of an item that clearly has a company's name and logo on it, that you may want to be doing a review on.  Can you take a photo of an item that you purchased and then put it in a hub or blog without fear of breaking any copyright violations?
   
   If this is an obvious one, do forgive me!  As far as I know however, people do this all the time, and it is allowed.  In other words, the name and picture whose copyright belongs to the company, but you are writing about it and sharing a picture in order to do a review or something like that?

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2. 79

   junksellerposted 10 years ago

   Copyright is tricky. The only time you are truly safe is if you own the content or you have explicit permission to use the content. Otherwise, the content belongs to someone else and they can technically take legal action against you. Will a company bother going after someone who puts a photo on a hub? Probably not, unless it is negative towards them and you are getting a lot of traffic.
   
   Even if they did initiate a legal action, you have the option of putting forward a fair use defense, which basically immunizes you against their legal action. Fair use is equally tricky, but one of the generally legitimate cases of fair use is if you are using content for the purpose of criticism or critique.
   
   Now, logos are an entirely different beast as they can have both trademark and copyright protections. That's what the ™ (trademark) or ® (registered trademark) symbols are that are often shown next to logos. Those aren't of concern for what you are doing, but while most logos have trademark protections not all of them have copyright protections. My understanding (and this is well out of my legal knowledge) is that for logos to have copyright protections they must have some level of creativity to them. How much creativity seems to be a fuzzy distinction. As examples, the Nike logo, a simple swoosh, is not copyrighted, but the Harley Davidson logo is (I think anyway).

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3. 60

   Edjanseposted 10 years ago

   It is not legal...unless it has copyright permission.
   If in your case, then anyone can take photo of a brand and publish in their own site...!!! Not right. Isn't it.

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