Who owns old icons?

[Kay C Lan]

On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 5:31 PM, Mark Schonewille <
m.schonewille at economy-x-talk.com> wrote:

> That's not true. Apple declared HyperCard dead. They deliberately took
> their HyperCard website off-line and the general director of Apple Europe
> told me Apple would never ever invest in HyperCard again and apparently they
> wouldn't even consider buying stamps to ship any remaining inventory to
> Europe.
>

I'm sure that is all true

>
> I haven't seen that list lately, but I guess AppleWorks for Apple IIGS is
> still on it too.
>

Yes, AppleWorks is there but I can't remember seeing the IIGS there.

Again, as I stated in my first post, this is my impression, not a statement
of the true legal situation. Whilst Marketing, R&D may know that HC is dead,
and high placed exec's in certain circumstances may state that HC is dead,
can you guarantee the legal vultures want come calling.

My reference to HC not being dead was not as a starry eyed User ever hopeful
of HCs resurrection but in context of the legal ramifications of copying
other people's work, even if it is old work. IMO I don't think what Richmond
has done with the HC button icons is kosher, but I don't think Apple will
come calling. On the other hand, did you ask the GD of Apple Europe if you
could convert all the official HC documents to pdf format and distribute it
and everything that came on the floppies onto a single CD and then sell if
for a small price? If you didn't ask that question, what do you imagine the
answer would be?

To me, the existence of HC on the Apple software registration site is all
Apple needs to do to confirm they are still very much the owners of all
things HC. ie it's not public domain. It will be lawyers, not Marketing, R&D
or GDs, who decide what to do with people who don't respect that ownership.

Not a lawyer so I'm probably completely wrong.