Logo and Lyrics in a short film
- March 14, 2011 @ 5:21pmmarianogv says:Hello, I have some doubts about copyright.
I will my film school thesis and there are some things that I wanna use but I'm not sure if I must have permission to do it.
1) the logo of the Dharma Initiative from TV show LOST, on a Shirt worn by one of my characters.
2) the name of the fictional band The Clash at Demonhead from Scott Pilgrim's comic book in a dialogue. And also quoting one of their, also fictional, songs featured in the comic, without mention the comic.
3) the Apple logo in the back of a macbook, cause I've seen that in many places they covered it or change it for a different logo.
Hope somebody could help me. Thank you. - March 17, 2011 @ 9:20amFreya Anderson says:I think that for most of the uses you describe, the key would be whether the use was incidental or not. That is, if someone just happened to wear a t-shirt with the Darma Initiative logo, that would be much less likely to be an issue than if that were an integral part of the plot or focus upon in some way. Regarding the Apple logo, I would think that might be a trademark issue, but my guess is that it's more likely that it's a product placement issue and the logo was obscured or changed because Apple didn't pay for product placement. If your use is not incidental, such as in #2, I would recommend completing a fair use analysis to determine if the use would be allowable. There's a handy form for this linked from this site's wiki under Fair Use. You might also want to look over some of the copyright resources at the Center for Social Media at http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use.
- March 17, 2011 @ 3:36pmmarianogv says:Hey thank you so much, that info has been really useful.
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