Help /
What does copyright cover?
This is perhaps a question best answered by lawyers and this definitely isn't an attempt to define copyright law where you live, but in a nutshell, copyright covers implementations, not ideas.
For example, if a designer uses a butterfly in a logo design first and the contest holder likes it, other designers are free to take and extend that concept. However, if they use the original designer's illustration of a butterfly, it's a clear violation of their copyright.
It's the same for logotype contests—no-one can own copyright over the idea of a sans-serif font, but Linotype definitely owns the rights to Helvetica. Therefore, you can't make use of Helvetica in a logotype contest without modifying it in some way, like Microsoft did in their famous "pac-man" logotype by taking a slice from the first 'o' in ‘Microsoft.'
|
|