 Oh boy. A lot of stuff has happened with the trademark situation in the last few days. I've been meaning to do a video on exactly why the SCP logo trademark wasn't valid, but there's a few things that I should probably explain first regarding the recent developments. First of all, the letter the English wiki sent to Russia has been made public, and who boy, it's a doozy. There'll be a link in the description below, but a few highlights include pointing out the creative commons nature of the SCP wiki, explaining why the SCP wiki is creative commons from a rights perspective, and finally, we'll get around to this issue a little bit later, explaining that the SCP logo, which they issued a trademark for, is actually just a generic electrostatic device warning logo. But the whole thing is really worth a read if you're interested in more of the minutiae surrounding this issue. But with that out of the way, the second big thing is that Andre Duxen has actually released a video on YouTube apologizing for the situation saying he's going to be canceling the trademark, eventually. Apparently, he's got ongoing projects, and you can just imagine the air quotes around that, for which he says he signed an NDA, so a nondisclosure agreement, I should say, that are dependent on the trademark still being active, so he has to figure out a way to deal with those issues. Now personally, he talks about it being necessary for these high-end professional projects to happen, but I don't see how any high-end professional project would ever sign on to something like this with the basis of a trademark and not a copyright. But you know what, I'm just going to take him at his word that this means he's likely signed contracts involving these projects. I mean, if he has signed contracts though, I mean I can't say this for certain, but there's almost certainly money that changed hands in exchange for his trademark and the signing of the NDA. I kind of already explained the difference between a copyright and a trademark in my last video, but just a quick explanation for this one is that you say trademark the Pepsi logo in copyrighted novel. A novel about a Pepsi executive wouldn't infringe on the Pepsi trademark unless they put a logo on the cover or maybe said that it was nonfiction. These are quite simply entirely different types of protections. He has a trademark, not a copyright. A trademark on the SCP logo doesn't invalidate the creative common's nature of the underlying works because that's copyright. Even if the trademark was valid, no one who understands intellectual property law on any serious level would treat it as if it did. At least not if they were being honest about it. Anyway, he says he's winding down his deals and figuring out a way to fix this, so let's see if that actually happens. Regardless, the primary topic of this video was actually supposed to be about why the SCP logo can't be trademarked at all. Now you'd imagine that I'd go on all day about creative commons licensing and all the other things, and I think most of you understand how creative commons works at this point. All wiki works are under the license that allows them to be freely distributed. What you may not know, and I say this because a lot of folk in the last few days who I've talked to seem to be surprised by this, is that the SCP logo is not an original creation. It's a reused stock image you can find in Adobe Illustrators 2007 edition. A little history on this. There are two primary warning labels you can use to denote electrostatic devices. Now an electrostatic device is just something that's damaged by static shocks. It's not a lot of devices out there that are sensitive enough that a tiny amount of electricity can rack them, but there are some, so there are warnings about it, so people don't rack expensive equipment. The two labels are on your screen right now, and you may have noticed that the one on the right, which I should note is the less used of the two, is very familiar. If you take it, you flip it over and you put a shape around it, we'll call it a gear or shield, you basically have the SCP logo. Now you might think that's just a coincidence, but you'd probably be wrong. This is a screenshot of Adobe Illustrator 2007, and see the image on the right side there? Does that remind you of anything? Yeah. This image is shown up in at least three different television shows, likely from some person in one of them who used Adobe Illustrator and just thought, hey, that looks cool, and just slapped it on there. This image shows its use in Sesame Street in 2007, and if you want the specific episode, it's called Episode 4154. You can actually purchase the relevant segment on a DVD called Count on Sports, if you're really curious and you really want to see it. Now this image is a screenshot from an episode of Wizards of Waverly Place, also from 2007. I don't have the exact episode information in front of me, but again, it's the same Adobe Illustrator image. Here's another still from a BBC show called Hank Zipzer. You'll notice in all three of these that the logo has the same golden tinge to it, and that's because it's all sourced from the same original image from Adobe Illustrator. All of these uses predate both the first use of the logo on the wiki, and even the existence of the wiki at all. And also, for fun, here's a version of it from a high school plaque or something. Now we can't know for certain, but the likelihood is that whoever created the image in Adobe Illustrator used the electrostatic device's warning symbol as an inspiration to create the image, and Fartu, who is credited with the creation of the SCP logo, just fiddled with it a bit to make it what it is today. Since Fartu presumably owned Adobe Illustrator, they were legally allowed to do this because you purchase that product and it gives you sort of a limited license for reproduction. That's why these TV shows are able to use it as well. So what does that mean? It means that even if there was an argument to be made that Creative Commons doesn't apply to the SCP logo and tagline in Russia because Russia is different or something, which by the way is a whole other conversation but long story short is totally untrue, then the rights for the SCP logo would default back to the original holder of the license, and incidentally would be all rights reserved. So either the SCP logo is Creative Commons or it's owned by Adobe. And I guarantee you that's not a fight that Andre Duxen wants to have. Hopefully this is the last video I have to make on this topic for a while. I'll reiterate my call from the last video to take no hostile actions against Andre Duxen. He says he's fixing the problem, and even if he isn't, hostile acts are just going to harm the ongoing legal case. Even if you perform them anonymously. Just don't do it. Anyway, that's it. If you liked the video and want to see more content by me, hit the subscribe button. I do a video every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at the exact same time of day. I'm a writer on the SCP Wiki myself with almost 100 articles to my name. I do lower videos, writing advice, SCP topics like this video, and the occasional reading, often of my own published works from the Wiki. I'm inching ever closer to the 10,000 subscriber milestone, and I'm super thankful to my viewers for getting me to this point. 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