question about icon,bitmap,cursor resources in user.dll
Troy Rollo
wine at troy.rollo.name
Wed Jul 23 23:10:52 CDT 2003
On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 13:42, Jonathan Wilson wrote:
> I notice that some of the icons, cursors and bitmaps used in the user of
> wine (for example, the 4 icons used in message boxes) look just like the
> windows ones.
> How can wine have them looking just like the windows ones and not violate
> microsoft copyright? Or are they copyright violations but WINE just hasnt
> been sued yet?
It depends on how closely the bitmaps mirror the Windows ones, as well as how
closely the icon has become associated with the idea represented by the icon.
For instance, the 16x16 folder icons used by Microsoft have probably become
so closely identified with the idea that it would be legal to reuse them
verbatim. This is even more so because there is such a limited range of
possible expressions of the idea in such a small space.
On the other hand, the icons for the message boxes are probably not
sufficiently associated with the idea, and being 32x32 icons there's a more
significant range of possible expressions (four times the space). They should
probably be redone if they are literal copies of the Microsoft ones.
It is one of the great ironies of copyright law that if a software company is
too successful in promoting their user interface, they actually start to lose
copyright protection for the function-oriented graphics used in that user
interface.
In your case, in the cards there is a significant amount of protectable
expression. However cards have been around for thousands of years, and in
their modern European form for hundreds of years. This means you might well
find some cards whose copyright has expired to scan in if you look hard
enough, but you can't use the Microsoft ones because they clearly fall into
the protectable category.
This is no doubt why playing cards tend to have lots of little fiddly
decorations on the face cards - to increase the amount of protectable
expression.
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