Legal/Copyright Issue

[jxlproject]

Hi,

 

I am really interested with Affinity Designer. If I want to write, publish, and sell a tutorial e-book for Affinity Designer, could you please elaborate about any issue regarding legal, copyright, and/or royalties regarding this?

 

 

Regards,

Catur

[KateM]

Hi Catur,

 

There are many things you need to know when publishing material, especially that you will profit from, in terms of the legalities. I will try and cover some of this here, but I can’t stress enough that my reply is only to give you an idea and is no substitute for you getting proper legal counsel…

 

Serif owns the copyright for all Affinity software, and all Affinity and Serif logos/branding. Any use of these would require obtaining a written permission from us and we would need to approve an outline of your project. Essentially, this is just to protect our users so that they know which products and content come from Affinity/Serif and which content doesn’t. You may still publish a book about Affinity without our seal of approval — but you should really have a disclaimer stating that. In terms of any visual content you would wish to include, you would need to be aware of the following:

 

1. Any content created by Serif or anyone we have employed to create content for us, is licensed to Serif. This is also goes for any stock photography, videos and music we use. So you couldn’t just use content from our sample artwork in your ezine, you would need to create your own original works or commission a designer(s) for this purpose. 

 

2. If you are going to create (or commission) content from designer and photographers for you to use in your ebook, you will have to consider copyright laws in every territory you are looking to publish your book in to see what the restrictions are. For example, this is an interesting article on American copyright law in terms of Travel Photography: http://photosecrets.com/do-i-need-permission

 

Hope that helps a bit, it's a wide subject and it really does depend on what you are hoping to include in your project and where/how you are hoping to publish it! If you need any further help off the forum in regards to this you can email me at kmusgrove@serif.com.

 

All the best,

 

Kate

[jxlproject]

Dear Kate,

 

Thank you very much for your reply. I totally understand that there are copyright and permission matters if I am about to use others' artworks. So basically, if I use Affinity Designers' logo, tools' icons and screenshot of the software in the tutorials, it is fine for me as long as I get a written permission or have a disclaimer about it (please CMIIW).

 

Sure, I will contact you later to discuss more about this.

 

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Catur

[Dale]

it is fine for me as long as I get a written permission or have a disclaimer about it

 

That's not what Kate said, jxl.

 

- If you write a book about Serif/Affinity you do not need permission but should probably post a disclaimer stating we were not involved.

 

- Serif owns the copyright for all Affinity software, and all Affinity and Serif logos/branding. Any use of these would require obtaining a written permission from us and we would need to approve an outline of your project.

 

Thanks.

[jxlproject]

That's not what Kate said, jxl.

 

- If you write a book about Serif/Affinity you do not need permission but should probably post a disclaimer stating we were not involved.

 

- Serif owns the copyright for all Affinity software, and all Affinity and Serif logos/branding. Any use of these would require obtaining a written permission from us and we would need to approve an outline of your project.

 

Thanks.

 

Okay, Dale, thank you for your further explanation.

[derlange 58]

I've read through the post of Kate M and have come to the decision NOT to use Serif logo's