User talk:Marchjuly/Archives/2021/October

Valamis logo speedy deletion notification

Hello Marchjuly. On 2 July 2018, I submitted the next file. You marked it for speedy deletion, reason: "No indication from the source website that this logo has been released as licensed. The company's official website shows the logo, but copyright on all the content on the website is being claimed by "© 2018 Valamis Group". Valamis Group Oy is the owner and register of this trademark. What can we do to stop this deletion and also remove this notification? Check my talk page for more info. I can provide registration info. Ivan.Andreev (talk) 14:45, 25 October 2021 (UTC).

@Ivan.Andreev: When I tagged the file with {{Npd}} it was licensed as {{Cc-by-sa-4.0}}. You subsequently changed the file's license to {{PD-textlogo}} so the situation is now slightly different. In the first case, you were claiming that the logo was complex enough to be protected by copyright and that the copyright holder was agreeing to make a version of the logo available for easy re-use. In the second case you're claiming exactly the opposite and that the logo is too simple to be protected by copyright. There are issuse with both claims, so you and Valamis should be quite sure you both understand what it means for you to upload the logo to Commons. Are you connected to en:Valamis in any way? Do you represent the company is some sort of official capacity? Does Valamis understand that by you uploading its logo to Commons that it's basically giving anyone anywhere in the world permission to download the file at any time and re-use for any purpose (including commercial and derivative re-use). Moreover, once it agrees to do such a thing, it can't change its mind at a later date.

In the case of the cc-by-sa-4.0 license, all anyone needs to do is comply with the terms of the license by attributing the logo to Valamis or you whenever they want to re-use the file. They can use it anyway they want as long as they say where the logo cames from and there's nothing really that Wikimedia Commons can do to stop them per COM:REUSE and COM:ENFORCE. Any problems with re-users of the logo will have to be resolved by Valamis or you. Valamis will still own the copyright on the logo, but the version it makes available through Wikimedia Commons can be used by anyone for any purpose, including ways that Valamis might not like.

In the case of the PD-textlogo license, Valamis doesn't even own the copyright on the logo because there's no copyright to own. Valamis is basically saying that their logo is too simple to be protected under the copyright laws of both the United States (where the Commons servers are located) and the en:country of origin Finland (where Valamis is located). So, anyone can use the logo any way they want without even saying where the logo came from and there will be nothing that Valamis can do from a copyright law standpoint to stop them. There may be other rights besides copyright that Valamis can try to enforce, but those rights have nothing to do with Wikimedia Commons and trying to enforce them will be left up to Valamis. Please also understand that there's a difference between en:trademark and en:copyright. A logo may be too simple to eligible for copyright protection, but it can still be trademarked. Wikimedia Commons is only concerned about the copyright status of the logo. If someone violates Valamis's trademark when they re-use the logo, then that's not a concern of Wikimedia Commons.

If you represent Valamis and all it wants to do is use the logo in the Wikipedia article en:Valamis (i.e. it doesn't want give permission to others to use the logo anywhere else or in any other ways), then uploading the logo up to Wikimedia Commons was a mistake; in that case, you should request that the Commons file be deleted per COM:DR and then re-upload a version of it local to English Wikipedia as non-free content for use in the Wikipedia article. On the other hand, if Valamis doesn't care who re-uses their logo or how it's re-used, then my suggestion to you would be to have Valamis send in a COM:CONSENT email to COM:VRT as explained in COM:VRT#Licensing images: when do I contact VRT? so that its intent to do so can be formally verified by Wikimedia VRT. Of course, if you're not connected to Valamis in any way, then you shouldn't be uploading its logo without its consent as explained in COM:VRT#If you are NOT the copyright holder. -- Marchjuly (talk) 14:12, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: Hello Marchjuly, thank you for your answer and time. Answering your questions, yes, I represent the company. I declared COI on my wiki page. Yes, the main purpose is to properly represent the logo in the company's article en:Valamis, according to the rules. At that time I uploaded the logo according to the next explanation en:Wikipedia:Logos#Copyright-free_logos. For us it looks quite the same as File:Best Western logo.svg. Maybe we are wrong. What would you suggest? Should we upload it directly to Wikipedia as a non-free logo or as a Copyright-free logo? -- Ivan.Andreev (talk) 11:26, 27 October 2021 (UTC).

Commons requires that a file be PD it both the United States and its country of origin. en:Best Western is a US company which means the country of origin is the US; your company is a Finnish company which means the logo needs to be PD in both the US and Finland. If you want to upload your company’s logo to Commons, then you can; however, you should carefully read COM:CONSENT and be absolutely sure that’s what you want to do. Anyone can download the file and use it pretty much anyway they want and you won’t be able to stop them as long as they comply with the terms of the license. It’s your company and your logo; so, it matters not to me or anyone else at Commons how others use it. If you don’t want other people to be able to freely use your logo, then it would probably be better to upload the logo to Wikipedia as non-free content. People can still download the logo and reuse it as they want, but they won’t be able to say you gave them permission to use the file by uploading it to Wikipedia. One thing about non-free content on Wikipedia is that relevant Wikipedia policy is quite restrictive and non-free logos can only be used in certain ways. It would most likely be OK to use the logo in a stand-alone Wikipedia article about your company for primary identification purposes, but it’s going to be much harder to use the logo in other ways or in other articles. Finally, just to reiterate something I mentioned in my last post, licensing the logo as PD means that there’s no copyright protection for it and anyone can use any way they want without worrying about anything at all. If you want to do that, then fine; however, I strongly suggest you contact someone familiar with Finnish copyright law before doing such a thing and ask them to explain all of the ramifications to you. PD essentially means you have pretty much zero control over the logo from a copyright standpoint because there’s no license to comply with, while a Creative Commons license means you have a lot less control than a non-free license but still more control than zero. — Marchjuly (talk) 12:19, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello Marchjuly, I've requested deletion of the file File:Valamis-logo-black-rgb.svg and re-uploaded the logo as non-free content to Wikipedia itself en:File:Valamis-logo-black.svg. I've added more info based on the suggestions and requirements. I've added the next parameter regtrademark=yes based on the next template en:Template:Non-free_logo (we have a trademark). Thank you so much for your help and suggestions. Ivan.Andreev (talk) 12:53, 28 October 2021 (UTC)