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>I took this twitter bird from https://www.iconfinder.com https://www.iconfinder.com and it has license "Creative Commons (Attribution 3.0 Unported)" First, Cr
by declan 11y ago
>I took this twitter bird from https://www.iconfinder.com https://www.iconfinder.com and it has license "Creative Commons (Attribution 3.0 Unported)"
First, Creative Commons licenses only deal with copyright, as far as I can recall, not trademark rights.
Second, you don't even know that whoever put it on iconfinder.com and released it under Creative Commons had the right to do so; they may have uploaded a copyrighted image that you are now unwittingly using, and unwitting use is no defense against liability.
Third, you are violating Twitter's guidelines, so as an ethical -- non-legal -- matter, you should stop.
Fourth, you're likely violating trademark law, which is designed to protect Twitter from having its official apps confused with others; yours looks like an official one.
Fifth, Twitter is likely a famous mark, meaning its trademarks are protected against dilution even if consumers aren't confused. Famous marks get extra trademark rights.
Sixth, it looks like your app relies on Twitter's API and would be worthless if you get cut off. So you should have a strong incentive not to piss them off.
Seventh, as a practical matter Twitter may not notice and send you a C&D immediately (or ever), but if you become big enough to notice, you may be liable for retroactive damages from the time of first infringing use.
It may be okay to use temporary icons as placeholders for apps in private alpha or beta, but it looks like yours is already in the app store. For example, I have a non-final icon for https://recent.io/ https://recent.io/ right now but have a contract with a designer to prepare a final one pre-launch and am iterating with her this week. You might want to do the same; look at previous HN threads about how to find designers.