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by adamgamble 1947 days ago
We've had to tackled the provenance problem at my company (https://www.vecteezy.com) by getting all of our content directly from the original designers. It was a crap ton of work and took us several years, but that allowed us to also back it up with legal indemnification. We now have a team of 18 folks reviewing all our content for legal and copyright issues now and we back it up with up to $100k in legal indemnity. So far it seems to be helping.
2 comments
joshspankit 1947 days ago
Suggestion: Submit “We've tackled the (SVG?) provenance problem” to HN in the form of a blog post that expands on your reply.

Rigorous provenance is vital when it’s vital.

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sigmaprimus 1947 days ago
Many years ago (early 90s) I used some vector art from a CorelDraw cdrom on a buisness card for my company logo. somehow my card made its way to another company's lawer who served me with a cease and desist notice. Being a small company and not wanting to be sued, I complied and stopped using the logo. I can't recall if it was a copyright or trademark issue but I remember the letter caused me a great deal of stress at the time.

Looking back now it was sort of a blessing in disguise since because of that letter, the next time I started a company I took the time to learn the simple process of taking a digital photo and converting it into to an SVG and have done that for all of my companies I've started over the years.

Creating an SVG logo or clipart from a photograph isn't difficult to do, especially nowadays with Inkscape and actually provides a sort of CMA proof of work to defend against copyright trolls.

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gardaani 1947 days ago
Creating your logo yourself will protect against copyright claims, but it won't protect against trademark violations.

Apple sued Prepear because Prepear's logo looked too much like the Apple logo [1]. Prepear spent lots of money to defend themselves and finally made a small change to the logo to make Apple happy.

I think the lesson is to be prepared to change icons and logos swiftly when another legal entity sues for copyright or trademark violation.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/09/apple-and-prepear-reach-an-ag...

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