Re: Not snazzy (was: New Unicode Savvy Logo)

From: "Theodore H. Smith" <delete@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Why not put up a call for Unicode logos? Instead of asking for an 
> inhouse one to be made, I'm sure you'd get more logos offered than you 
> could know what to do with. At the worst, you could have a design to 
> learn from.
> 
> Some of my logos were made with suggestions from other people. I did 
> the work, I did most of the design, but important elements came by 
> other people's ideas. This way I own what I do and it is "in house", 
> but still I am open to external improvement.
> 
> Hey, if you can give me a tiff of the "Unicode" word (in it's large 
> original format) which is the part that I actually did like, I could 
> re-do the rest for you in PhotoShop v6 format, and submit as a 
> suggestion.

In my humble opinion, I do think that the unique design of the "UNI" ligature 
in the Unicode official logo is already copyrighted, and thus any logo that 
would be created with it would require an authorization from Unicode before 
being published.

So any other logo that would be proposed should use this unique typographic 
ligature as a sign of recognition, and Unicode could mandate that any use of 
this ligature requires linking it to its website and nothing else. This would 
leave some space for creation of more appealing logos or buttons for use on 
websites.

Another question is: can such a derived logo be created which uses the same 
official colors of the main Unicode logo? The proposed buttons do not match 
completely with the official logo by its colors, and layout and content. The 
only common thing is the "UNi" ligature, and the textual name (both of which 
are copyrighted and protected against illegitimate claims by others)...

This copyright is enough to allow reproducing it on websites only with the fair 
terms given in the logos page, only as a way to insert a graphic link to the 
official Unicode website (http://www.unicode.org/), but any author of a derived 
graphic that would use the "Unicode" name or the unique "UNi" ligature cannot 
claim anything if this creation is published without the prior authorization of 
Unicode who owns the copyrights.

So these creations are implicitly donated to Unicode without possible claims. 
Then Unicode could reuse these creations only if the original author explicitly 
endorses the risks associated to other possible copyright claims related to 
other parts of the logo creation. Unicode would then be free to use or not use 
them on its logos page, and could use a "prepublishing" phase where usage on 
other websites is NOT recommended by Unicode), during which other authors can 
address their claims. If such a claim is found in this phase, the logo will be 
removed immediately.

After a reasonnable period these prepublished logos would become universally 
usable in their unaltered form (including its colors, layout, dimensions and 
typography) and further claim would still be possible but only for a public 
statement where such restricted usage is authorized on a royaltee-free and non 
time-limited licence donated to the Unicode.org committee, which could then not 
change or extend any term of the usage policy for these logos.

If such future change is needed for the policy (for example if Unicode becomes 
a ISO committee, and has its domain name changed to a new international ISO 
domain), then Unicode would need to remove the logos or get an explicit 
authorization from the original authors, but Unicode would still keep its full 
rights on the whole logo which uses the protected name "Unicode" or the unique 
"UNi" ligature, so that legacy websites using them would not be forced to 
remove these logos from a lot of unmaintained web pages.

This means that a web page is not authorized to change the link without 
adhering to the new usage policy published in any new domain, even if the 
"unicode.org" domain name is deregistered. If the link stops working, the only 
thing that the website author could do would be to remove both the logo and the 
link, and find a newer logo and link for the new domain name according to a 
newer usage policy...

Sun already has such a policy for the Java(tm) logo, however it is more 
restrictive as it requires a registration with a valid email that the user must 
maintain valid in order to be able to receive mandatory notices of changes in 
the logo usage policy. The W3C and the ICRA content rating system publish some 
good policies for the logos that can be used in websites that conform to their 
specifications.


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