Peanuts Character

[jdhuk]

Would i be allowed to put a Peanuts character (Charlie Brown) on my home page. The website has nothing to do with Peanuts but the character would look great next to a link to a kids section.

Although a little amusing, copyright is a serious issue but i am unclear if a picture of this nature would cause repercussions ..........

[EileenC]

Nope, they'd nail you right away for unlicensed use of the character. Some companies are very aggressive about protecting their copyrights, and I'm pretty sure the company that owns the Peanuts gang is one of them.

[Rosalind]

Seek out the owner of the copyright/trademark, and ask permission. That's your safest bet, although they may either refuse or charge you a fee.

Although in practice a lot of sites use images that don't belong to them without seeking permission, it's not worth the risk. If your site becomes popular it will almost certainly be noticed by the owners. And there's no point having a site if you have to worry about it attracting too much attention.

[rogerd]

The more valuable the franchise, the more aggressive the owners of the intellectual property will be in protecting it. I'd recommend using a more generic clip-art image or one of your own creation.

[Marcia]

An alternative is if the license holders have an affiliate program or there's a product licensed to use it that has an affiliate program with a graphic available, to put up a link like that. For example, Winnie the Pooh is trademarked and there are loads of products out there that legally can use Pooh.

[jdhuk]

Thank you very much.