question about icon,bitmap,cursor resources in user.dll

[Jonathan Wilson]

I notice that some of the icons, cursors and bitmaps used in the user of 
wine (for example, the 4 icons used in message boxes) look just like the 
windows ones.
How can wine have them looking just like the windows ones and not violate 
microsoft copyright? Or are they copyright violations but WINE just hasnt 
been sued yet?

[Troy Rollo]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 13:42, Jonathan Wilson wrote:
> I notice that some of the icons, cursors and bitmaps used in the user of
> wine (for example, the 4 icons used in message boxes) look just like the
> windows ones.
> How can wine have them looking just like the windows ones and not violate
> microsoft copyright? Or are they copyright violations but WINE just hasnt
> been sued yet?

It depends on how closely the bitmaps mirror the Windows ones, as well as how 
closely the icon has become associated with the idea represented by the icon. 
For instance, the 16x16 folder icons used by Microsoft have probably become 
so closely identified with the idea that it would be legal to reuse them 
verbatim. This is even more so because there is such a limited range of 
possible expressions of the idea in such a small space.

On the other hand, the icons for the message boxes are probably not 
sufficiently associated with the idea, and being 32x32 icons there's a more 
significant range of possible expressions (four times the space). They should 
probably be redone if they are literal copies of the Microsoft ones.

It is one of the great ironies of copyright law that if a software company is 
too successful in promoting their user interface, they actually start to lose 
copyright protection for the function-oriented graphics used in that user 
interface.

In your case, in the cards there is a significant amount of protectable 
expression. However cards have been around for thousands of years, and in 
their modern European form for hundreds of years. This means you might well 
find some cards whose copyright has expired to scan in if you look hard 
enough, but you can't use the Microsoft ones because they clearly fall into 
the protectable category.

This is no doubt why playing cards tend to have lots of little fiddly 
decorations on the face cards - to increase the amount of protectable 
expression.