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I'm making a web application that will include links to over 500 games. For every game link I'm planning on including the game's logo. I'm planning to either acquire the logos from the games websites or from Google image searches.

Is it legal for me to use the game logos in my application? Will it be more/less legal if I include a disclaimer somewhere about the ownership of the logos? Maybe there are special rules for most game logos?

My first assumption is yes, of course it's illegal to display somebody else's copyrighted material in my application without explicit permission, but most game related web-pages I've ever visited has graphics of games in them, especially the logos - so I'm confused. Are those sites breaking the law? Could anybody help me clear this up?

(I live in Norway, and the application will be hosted from Norway)

I know this question would be best directed at a lawyer, but as there isn't a law site at stack exchange and this is a question that a lot of programmers probably know the answer to, I'm asking it here. Hope that's cool.

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The specific art of the logo is copyrighted. The logo itself is likely trademarked. Talk to a lawyer for the specifics on intellectual property in your locale. Things can get fuzzy with international law getting in the mix. – MichaelT Feb 10 at 4:12
@MichaelT: Is it safe to assume that if a company found my application and disliked the use of their logo, they would give me a change to remove it before launching full-scale cross-globe lawsuits? – Codemonkey Feb 10 at 4:22
It really depends on the company. Trademarks must be protected or they can be lost (see trademark dilution). – MichaelT Feb 10 at 4:29
@Codemonkey Even if we were to give our collective opinions about your legal question, when you could be sued for damages and lose everything do you really want to trust advice from random strangers on the web? This is one of those questions where it is best to pay for a legal consultation. – maple_shaft♦ Feb 10 at 4:38

closed as off topic by maple_shaft♦ Feb 10 at 4:35

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It's impossible to give a "ask a lawyer" answer - unless you know what the rules are for a Norwegian programmer accessing a US server to load the image of a game drawn by a Romanian artist for a company registered in Grand Caymen!

A reasonable approach would be to include links with images then remove them if anyone complains. The name of the site is just as copyrighted as the image, but would anyone object to a link with their games name?

(Well some idiots did object to Google indexing their news sites but since they all vanished nobody cares)

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Your reasonable approach was what I was planning on doing. Just to be clear though, I was planning on hosting the images from my server in Norway, since I'll probably have to rescale the size of all the logos to fit my application. – Codemonkey Feb 10 at 4:24
Names of sites or brands are not copyrighted - they are trademarked (along with logos). Copyrights and trademarks are very different areas of intellectual property. – MichaelT Feb 10 at 4:54

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