Stalker stole our icon!

[Koen-ftw]

Yes, it's a bit spammy and useless to post it here, but I still noticed this:

http://images.xnr.be/2c51f43397d350c3e8f7be43cbc007af.png

[SargeMcCluck]

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=nuclear+symbol

[Koen-ftw]

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=nuclear+symbol

I know I know, but it's teh stolered!

[Run]

Oddly enough that's not even the official radioactive sign any more... it's this instead: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/10/New_radiation_symbol_ISO_21482.svg/589px-New_radiation_symbol_ISO_21482.svg.png

Which is rubbish.

[Alien King]

Strangely enough, I can't find that symbol being used on the Wikipedia's articles. Instead, I still see the old one.

Oh wait: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol

Your symbol refers only to ionising radiation

[Plasma]

Oddly enough that's not even the official radioactive sign any more... it's this instead: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/10/New_radiation_symbol_ISO_21482.svg/589px-New_radiation_symbol_ISO_21482.svg.png

Which is rubbish.
That's a warning sign. The radioactive symbol is still the same.

[Alien King]

It's still rubbish. It's too compicated with those small icons.

[AndrewTaylor]

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=nuclear+symbol

Technically, if Team17 registered the W:A icon as a trademark, they can (and must, if they want to keep the trademark) fight Stalker's use of the symbol as the logo for a computer game, and Stalker would have to change and/or pay royalties -- after all, the Beatles don't own apples, but they do own them as the logo for a music company. Otherwise, what's to stop me releasing a game with the letter lambda as its logo?

I don't know if or how those rules change when your symbol of choice was designed by someone else, but I'd assume that would have been checked when registering the trademark. W:A's logo was always a slightly modified trefoil anyway, so that might affect it as well.

If, on the other hand, Team17 use it as an unregistered trademark then as I understand it they effectively have pretty well no rights at all over its use. (In which case, why people still bother putting "TM" after things is something of a mystery.)

[SargeMcCluck]

I've seen other (and older) games that use the nuclear trefoil - An example is Fallout (Released 1997, WA was 1999). So if Interplay had trademarked it, they should have prevented Team17 from then using it.

[Alien King]

Doesn't W:A use an inverted trefoil? In any case, you can hardly trademark an official hazard sign, since it is used by many people quite frequently.

[AndrewTaylor]

Doesn't W:A use an inverted trefoil? In any case, you can hardly trademark an official hazard sign, since it is used by many people quite frequently.

Not as a computer game logo, it isn't.

(Well, apparently it is. But you get the point -- apples and the letter lambda are used all the time for all kinds of things, but use them as logos at your peril.)