- From: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 08:17:53 +0000 (GMT)
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> As with words, image meaning is certainly context-dependant, and ** in many cases assume prior knowledge by the target audience in order ** to be inequivocably understood. Company logos such as the McDonalds ** golden arches are certainly easier to recognise, but that's only because ** they are logos, copyrighted/trademarked/whatever...so it's less likely ** that designers will use them for anything other than something to do ** with the company (or risk a law suit, perhaps). For everyday things, More precisely, anything other than a reference to the company which has been authorised (normally in writing) by the company, is likely to attract the lawyers; it will do so even if the use is inoccuous, as that is the only way to defend against sites that you would not want to use it (even to reference you) using it. The use of *any* symbol for a company, developed by that company, is likely to be treated as a trademark by their lawyers. This may be the reason why favicons, which seem to represent a de-facto implementation of a link to me graphic, are not more widely used by companies. (favicon is implemented by a link element as well as by the rather unpopular one, with site operators, of a reserved URL local part). I think some companies would like to be able to treat home page URLs as trademarks in this respect, and many would like to impose restrictions on deep links. Companies in coutries that permitted "cookie-like" features without explicit informed consent (I believe the UK is not longer in this category) might well want any use of their image to be sourced from thier site, so that they could track usage of referring sites using Referrer headers on requests. Others would want this to ensure that only the standard version of the trademark is ever used.
Received on Monday, 19 January 2004 16:52:49 UTC