3 ms·

Legally in the US it's a question of whether copyright was violated or not when you copy a tiny bit. I'm not a lawyer but I feel confident in saying that you c

Legally in the US it's a question of whether copyright was violated or not when you copy a tiny bit. I'm not a lawyer but I feel confident in saying that you can copy a background color without a license, because a background color alone is definitely not copyrightable. But in the grey area... it's a grey area. There is lots of case law we could look at, but ultimately it depends on what a judge or jury would think if anyone took you to court. And sometimes they do surprising things. Which is why for well-resourced commercial operations (that have more to lose and more to gain), they don't take the risk. In this case... is anyone going to even notice or get mad if they notice you took 40% of a free HTML template for some random not-million-dollar website? Probabably not? If they do, then saying sorry and adding the attribution will probably suffice? That's the legal situation. I think it is reasonable to ask an ethical question separated from legality, which is a different question. Sometimes I ask the authors of open-source-licensed things what they would think about my use.

brookst 3y ago
Colors are not copyrightable, but they can be protected by trademarks: https://www.businessinsider.com/colors-that-are-trademarked-2012-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/colors-that-are-trademarked-...
- jrochkind1 3y ago
  True. As the article you linked to explains, a trademark on a color would prevent you from using the color(s) in ways that compete or confuse with the original company/product, but not any use of a color at all. It almost definitely isn't going to apply to the bg color an open sourced HTML template chose.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Though, to be more precise, it's protecting colors as part of the trade dress of a brand. In general, some especially vigilant trademark enforcement aside, you can use the color so long as it's not being used in a way that could plausibly cause confusion with the trademark holder.
xen2xen1 3y ago
Part of this is the "Look and Feel" Supreme Court decision from Apple v Microsoft (IIRC). Apple sued MS for copying the way their OS looked, and the Supreme Court said the entire thing wasn't able to be protected. But that only settled the "whole thing", not parts of pieces. Where that line is is the Grey area.

brookst 3y ago

Colors are not copyrightable, but they can be protected by trademarks: https://www.businessinsider.com/colors-that-are-trademarked-2012-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/colors-that-are-trademarked-...

jrochkind1 3y ago
True. As the article you linked to explains, a trademark on a color would prevent you from using the color(s) in ways that compete or confuse with the original company/product, but not any use of a color at all. It almost definitely isn't going to apply to the bg color an open sourced HTML template chose.
ghaff 3y ago
Though, to be more precise, it's protecting colors as part of the trade dress of a brand. In general, some especially vigilant trademark enforcement aside, you can use the color so long as it's not being used in a way that could plausibly cause confusion with the trademark holder.

xen2xen1 3y ago

Part of this is the "Look and Feel" Supreme Court decision from Apple v Microsoft (IIRC). Apple sued MS for copying the way their OS looked, and the Supreme Court said the entire thing wasn't able to be protected. But that only settled the "whole thing", not parts of pieces. Where that line is is the Grey area.