Startups Stack Exchange Archive

I would like to publish my app on the Google play store but one of my images looks like one from shutter stock

posted by: dan14941 on 2015-01-02
tagged: copyright
score: 2

I have made my own image, but i scared that my app will get rejected or taken down for copyright infringment. I have a image of a coin that looks very similar to one from shutter stock.

Edit: Is this counted as infringing any copyright?

enter image description here

My image:

enter image description here

Answer 1843

posted by: Matthew Haugen on 2015-01-02
score: 1

In other words, if I held a copyright on that opening sentence and you rephrased it as “copyright requires an exact match to infringe,” that wouldn’t infringe.

The fact that your image looks sorta like the stock one isn’t really a concern. It could be considered bad form, but I don’t think what you’ve done is too far at all. As Denis pointed out in a comment, “a coin is a coin, gold color is gold color, 3d shadows effects are shadows.” I wouldn’t take any particular notice to your artwork as being any different from any other.

The only way you could be considered infringing–probably–is if you had a copy-paste duplicate of that stock image used. It might also count if you just took a small, distinguishable part, but I don’t consider the shadowing you’ve taken to cross that line. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m definitely not a judge, so I can’t really say for certain, but it looks fine to me.

Just for good measure, the United States Copyright Office says:

…copyright law provides the owner of copyright in a work the exclusive right:

To reproduce the work in copies;

To prepare derivative works based upon the work;

To distribute copies of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

To perform the work publicly;

To display the copyrighted work publicly

In the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

To me, it seems like the closest one you hit there is “derivative work,” which is defined as:

A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a “derivative work”.

Which doesn’t seem to apply to your case.

The only type of intellectual property where “fuzzy matching” (not exact matches) really applies is in trademarks, since they’re meant to protect consumers from thinking something is from one company, when it is in fact from another. But that person wouldn’t have a trademark on that image, since it would have to be used in commerce (e.g. as a logo).

I’d be a bit tempted, if I were you, to swap around the shadow, just for the sake of differing it that much more, but it really shouldn’t matter from a legal standpoint.

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