Quote from: RT on March 10, 2010, 17:52

Maybe you should look up what a trademark actually is

Where did I say "trademark"?  

You didn't need to, the argument you are making has to do with trademarked colors, in combination, on agricultural equipment. Also it's not just any green and yellow, it's John Deere Green and yellow which is an exact color. I believe the paint is only made by one licensed company.

John Deere had registered the colour combination green-yellow for agricultural machines as a CTM based on acquired distinctiveness.

A toaster is not agricultural equipment.

Now someone tell me how you can protect Ayers Rock (not just a rock!) which is a natural feature of the planet. And before you jump into cultural understanding and religion, the American Indians could have the rights to the Grand Canyon on the same basis. See where it's getting a bit silly to claim a whole mountain is protected? Yellowstone? Devils Tower? Niagara Falls, want me to make a huge list of native significant sites?

If Ayers Rock is a NT site like the rest of the UK, not public land, and not supported by taxpayer dollars, they could restrict any photography within the park area, but not all photography of the mountain, should someone be outside the area they own and manage.

Quote from: RacePhoto on March 10, 2010, 22:15

Quote from: stockastic on March 10, 2010, 17:56

Quote from: RT on March 10, 2010, 17:52

Maybe you should look up what a trademark actually is

Where did I say "trademark"?  

You didn't need to, the argument you are making has to do with trademarked colors, in combination, on agricultural equipment. Also it's not just any green and yellow, it's John Deere Green and yellow which is an exact color. I believe the paint is only made by one licensed company.

John Deere had registered the colour combination green-yellow for agricultural machines as a CTM based on acquired distinctiveness.

A toaster is not agricultural equipment.

Now someone tell me how you can protect Ayers Rock (not just a rock!) which is a natural feature of the planet. And before you jump into cultural understanding and religion, the American Indians could have the rights to the Grand Canyon on the same basis. See where it's getting a bit silly to claim a whole mountain is protected? Yellowstone? Devils Tower? Niagara Falls, want me to make a huge list of native significant sites?

If Ayers Rock is a NT site like the rest of the UK, not public land, and not supported by taxpayer dollars, they could restrict any photography within the park area, but not all photography of the mountain, should someone be outside the area they own and manage.

Uluru (Ayers Rock) is not on public land - it's owned by the  Pitjanjara  -  The land is only managed by the National Parks people. The owners let you in on condition you respect their beliefs and don't do stuff that would offend them.

Well there's the answer. Private property, so they can "call the shots" or restrict them. The Director of National Parks connection also puts it out of reach because of their restrictions. If you can get a shot and not be on their land, it's fine. Same as castles,monuments, gardens, historic sites, and everything else that's regulated by the National Trust. The Director of National Parks has a 99 year lease on the property. They can restrict what you do on their property.

However I still don't understand someone claiming you can not take or sell a picture of a 500 million year old rock formation. This returns to the "everything in the world is copyrighted" topic. It is a naturally formed mountain!

Hmmmm
I was thinking of booking a trip to Madagascar (actually, I was booked last year,but they cancelled the trip of FO advice following the coup). I got a 'general information' pdf in today which inter alia said:
"NB: Extortionate camera fees are sometimes charged at the National Parks to those who seem to be taking photographs in a professional capacity (i.e. EU305 per person per park)."
Note that at today's exchange rates that's about US$417 per park. The trip I was looking at includes six national parks.
Looks like it's back to the drawing board. 

Didn't you always want to own a G11? 

Just read about the coup, people cutting the endangered Rosewood in rain forest, corruption up. Tourism down 70% based on warnings. Sounds scary enough that if I won a free trip I might pass it up.

Looks like a pretty place.

No shortage on alamy http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=ayers+rock&submitsearch=Search&st=0&go=1&a=-1&archive=1&size=0xFF&CreativeOn=1&lic=6&lic=1&mr=0&pr=0 they can have the sales

Quote from: FD-amateur on February 28, 2010, 07:02

I'm always checking at 300% around the edges. It can happen that edges are bleached out (especially hair) when your background is more than 1.5 stop overexposed. It's not because it's done in cam that it is good per se (I plead guilty).

But
  - why should we care about anything that's only "noticeable" at 300%?
  - you're describing a photographic/lighting issue, but their rejection implies a Photoshopped isolation.  You can't feather, or creae a "rough" edge, photographically.

At 300% it's easier to see and to remedy, but you will notice it at 100% too. To follow-up the fate of that series, it was first rejected for keywords, then for a logo (rightly so), then for "feathering", then a second time for "feathering". With the third reject, I finally got a decent explanation: areas out of focus should be feathered very softly as a hard feathering there looks "unnatural". The image can be seen here. The arm was slightly out of focus so I feathered it with 3px, but apparently it was not enough.

I have a disagreement about this with the reviewer, I'm afraid. Overwhites can be used as such on a white screen or paper background, but many people use them to cut those out easily. With a wide feathering, this is much more difficult as you can't get rid easily from the transition shades between the white background and the object. The same reason I avoid shadows under an isolated object. If the buyer wants to use the image as is, he can easily blur the out of focus edges himself, over any added background, and that would look "natural".

As a final step to recover the series, I combined the 6 21Mpx images into one, reducing the 120Mpx to 6Mpx, so that any out-of-focus would be gone (see here). Now this one was rejected with the reason: "please upload all 6 images individually".  

It will teach me a lesson never to resubmit on IS again, even if the reject reason is simple like forgot to attach a MRF. As soon as you've corrected those, they will find another reason to reject. It's simply not worth the hassle and the time to be sold now and then for 0.19$ as Xs, when it was sold on SS already a few times for double that amount.

Back to my original topic - Sock Monkey was accepted by SS, DT and FT, no problem.  It's even sold a couple of timess, so I decided to try another one, came up with what I thought was a funny and topical idea using the sock monkey.  

SS, although they approved the first one, rejected the second one as "trademark... not editorial".  

I resubmitted as "editorial".  

SS then rejected it as "not an editorial image."

What you can do legally, if someone sells a yellow tractor, or purple bar of chocolate, is sue them on the basis that they are IMPERSONATING your company, in order to make a sale. And by the way these law suits almost never win because it's extremely hard to prove.

Really, they almost never win?
http://news.findlaw.com/andrews/bt/int/20071018/20071018_wham-o.html
Following a seven-day trial, Slip 'N Slide manufacturer Wham-O Inc. has won a $6 million jury verdict that found that rival ToyQuest willfully infringed its federally registered trademark for the color yellow for water slides.
http://www.colormatters.com/color_trademark.html
A federal district court ruled in favor of Dap and granted protection to their red packaging.
http://www.blowoutcards.com/forums/news-announcements/60683-mlb-properties-settles-trademark-lawsuit-upper-deck.html
Upper Deck agreed it will not make any new sets of cards using MLB logos, uniforms, trade dress, or Club color combinations.

Quote from: hqimages on March 24, 2010, 05:47

What you can do legally, if someone sells a yellow tractor, or purple bar of chocolate, is sue them on the basis that they are IMPERSONATING your company, in order to make a sale. And by the way these law suits almost never win because it's extremely hard to prove.

Really, they almost never win?
http://news.findlaw.com/andrews/bt/int/20071018/20071018_wham-o.html
Following a seven-day trial, Slip 'N Slide manufacturer Wham-O Inc. has won a $6 million jury verdict that found that rival ToyQuest willfully infringed its federally registered trademark for the color yellow for water slides.
http://www.colormatters.com/color_trademark.html
A federal district court ruled in favor of Dap and granted protection to their red packaging.
http://www.blowoutcards.com/forums/news-announcements/60683-mlb-properties-settles-trademark-lawsuit-upper-deck.html
Upper Deck agreed it will not make any new sets of cards using MLB logos, uniforms, trade dress, or Club color combinations.

I'm sure if you go speak to the lawyer involved in that case, you will find the argument included 'impersonation' of the business as part of the suit, otherwise they would not have won..

"The jury rendered a verdict against ToyQuest for willful infringement, intentional false advertising, and willful dilution of WHAM-O's famous YELLOW trademark."

"The verdict is a major victory for WHAM-O in its ongoing efforts to prevent others from using its federally registered trademarks to deceive consumers into thinking they are purchasing original WHAM-O products."

Anyway, back on topic.