RE: Logos as trademarks

Hi Leonard,
My short answer to your question is . . . I do not know.  Having worked on
trademark litigation teams, I do know enough to say that I can't answer this
one!

Best regards,
Cynthia Waddell

---------------------------------------
Cynthia D. Waddell
Sr. Consultant/Subject Matter Expert
PSINet Consulting Solutions
Accessibility Center of Excellence

Raleigh, NC: 1-800-547-5602 ext. 136
Sacramento, CA: 1-800-408-3567

San Jose Office:
PO BOX 5456
San Jose, California  95150-5456
http://www.icdri.org/cynthia_waddell.htm


  -----Original Message-----
  From: Leonard R. Kasday [mailto:kasday@acm.org]
  Sent: Monday, October 23, 2000 11:55 AM
  To: Waddell, Cynthia
  Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
  Subject: Re: Logos as trademarks


  Hi Cynthia

  We need some legal input on an issue being discussed in the WAI guidelines
  group.  In general, the WAI guidelines require that text be presented in
  the HTML source, instead of part of an image.  This lets the user control
  the size, font, color, and background of the text, which is important for
  people with low vision.

  But what if a company has a logo that's a trademark, and that logo has
text
  in it.

  You can present that logo, with the text,

  (1) as a single bitmap (or compressed bitmap) image which guarantees it
  looks exactly--or almost exactly like the original (there can be
  some  small differences due e.g. to different color rendering or the
  screen's pixel's per centimeter).

  (2) Or you can implement the logo so that the text is real HTML text, not
  part of the image.  However, the text willnot look exactly like the
  original if the logo uses a special font and furthermore the user can
  change the font, size, and color.

  Is there a legal problem presenting the logo as in (2)?  For example, does
  it endanger the copyright status of the logo (I may not have the exact
  legal terminaology here BTW)?   Is this legal difficulty sufficient that a
  company could reasonably insist on presenting it as (1), or in some other
  form that gives almost complete control of the appearance?

  Thanks!
  Len
  p.s.
  Would you copy w3c-wai-gl@w3.org  in your answer? I had copied them in my
original email to you but it bounced because I had your old address.
Congrats on your new position BTW!

  --
  Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
  Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at
Temple University
  (215) 204-2247 (voice)                 (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
  http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday        mailto:kasday@acm.org

  Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group
  http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/

  The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant:
http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/