Commons:Deletion requests/File:Pennsylvania Yankees Foundation Sample Plate.png
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This deletion discussion is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive. You can read the deletion policy or ask a question at the Village pump. If the circumstances surrounding this file have changed in a notable manner, you may re-nominate this file or ask for it to be undeleted.
New York Yankees logo used here is presumably non-free; it appears to be over COM:TOO US and does not seem to be hosted elsewhere on Commons. Brianjd (talk) 05:34, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
Weak keep Yes, the logo is (almost certainly) above COM:TOO USA, but there's a bit more to consider given the long history of the logo's use. The "bat-in-the-hat" logo appears to have been used as early as 1946. I'm not able to find the instance of first publication (it might be the program/scorecard of the home opener from that year), but I think it's likely that it was published without a valid copyright notice. And, even if it were published with notice, there would have needed to have been a renewal on the copyright (see: {{PD-US-not-renewed}}). If the year of first publication was 1946, the renewal would have had to have occurred 28 years later (i.e. in or about 1974), but I'm not able to find the renewal record via an online search of the copyright catalog.- For what it's worth, there was a federal lawsuit about whether or not there was some copyright claim by a person who alleges that they created the logo, and a district court ruled that the work was published no later than 1947. The plaintiff in the case wrote in a court filing that the copyright had never been registered. And that, combined with the general inability to find any sort of renewal record for any version of the bat-with-a-hat logo published before 1978, makes me believe that this is not copyrighted in the United States for failing to adhere to copyright formalities. My only hesitation is that I don't have the response from the Yankees in that suit, so I'm unsure if they responded by claiming copyright on that logo, but I frankly don't see any evidence of that in any of the court rulings I have access to. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 07:15, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
- @Red-tailed hawk I went looking for a standalone version of the ‘bat-in-the-hat’ logo, and found it at en:File:NewYorkYankees PrimaryLogo.svg (where it is tagged as non-free). It was supposedly created in 1947, so could not have been used in 1946. I don’t know what’s going on there.
- Along the way, I found Commons: Deletion requests/Image:Flag of New York Yankees.jpg, which might also be eligible for undeletion (along, one presumes, with many others). That file contains some logo that entered use in 1936, which, according to enwiki, would be the jersey logo (already tagged PD). Brianjd (talk) 08:12, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
- My best guess on the dates is that it has to do with the shading; the appeals court notes that the original thing was designed in the 1930s (plaintiff's filing suggests in or after 1936 is the date of the first logo) and was later modified in 1947. The Yankees have used the 1947 version as their primary logo through the present day.
- For a new copyright to be created, the changes from the pre-existing work would themselves need to be greater than a new authorship that the author contributed to the derivative work may be registered, provided that it contains a sufficient amount of original expression, meaning that the derivative work must be independently created and it must possess more than a modicum of creativity (see: Compendium, Section 311.2). I don't really see any changes that themselves are above COM:TOO USA from the 1946 version; the addition of a trademark symbol is not creative, and the trivial simplification on the bat is not copyrightable. Section 906.3 of the Compendium notes that [m]erely adding or changing one or relatively few colors in a work, or combining expected or familiar pairs or sets of colors is not copyrightable, regardless of whether the changes are made by hand, computer, or some other process. This is the case even if the coloration makes a work more aesthetically pleasing or commercially valuable. So, as far as copyrights would be concerned, the changes in shading we might see would be irrelevant to a new copyright being created on those changes. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 08:42, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
Kept: per Red-tailed hawk, PD-US-not-renewed. --IronGargoyle (talk) 20:03, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
