copyrighted names in images

zedEL

I was wondering if images that contain copyrighted names are allowed to upload ?
For example, an image that has "Starbucks" in it, or "McDonalds"...?

Thanks!:scratch

Baldy

We got a letter from a law firm that purports to represent the Indiana Colts, threateing to sue us and any smugmuggers who upload images with the Colts logo or players.

That's really unusual, however, for a company to think it's smart to sue its fans for showing the team they used to love before they received that letter.

Mostly, companies wouldn't want you to falsely imply that you are associated with them in some way from a business perspective, sell their trademarks for profit, abuse their trademarks by altering them or showing them in a bad light in some Photoshop contest, etc.

We see photos every day in the press, here at Digital Grin and on smugmug that show someone walking into an Apple store to buy an iPod or some such.

zedEL

Thank you Baldy,

So, your suggestion is NOT to upload this type of images, that contain trademarks and logos ?

I remember seeing something related somewhere here, maybe in the "terms of...",... not sure..

I know that at stock photo sites images with visible trademarks are not accepted. But there, the buyer uses images for commercial purposes.

At Smugmug, the "Pro" members are selling them to private users, and that's where the sale process ends.
So, there is big difference here.

What is the Smugmug's rule about that ?

Baldy

We don't have a rule about it. I think the basic guideline is, don't exploit company trademarks for commercial purposes. But if you take a photo of Times Square, you're going to unavoidably get plenty of trademarks in there and we don't prohibit that at smugmug.