Licenses and Whatnot

[jessica.kellogg11]

If you buy a template and the seller doesn’t specify if the design is for personal or commercial use, can you presume commercial use is ok?

[Jules]

@jessica.kellogg11

the seller doesn’t specify if the design is for personal or commercial use, can you presume commercial use is ok?

No, exactly the opposite.

Without going into excruciating detail…most professional designers now offer licenses for commercial use. (If you didn’t buy a license, you shouldn’t be selling it.)

If you stick to selling your own designs, there’s no issue, but if you want to modify or use someone else’s design…just ask first. You might save yourself some serious hassle.

(Oh, and that applies to everything posted in the forum as well. Personal Use only.)

By posting a creative work (“User Content” under the Terms of Service ) anywhere on the Glowforge community site community.glowforge.com :

1. You represent that you are the sole and exclusive owner of all rights to this work.
2. You grant Glowforge and members of this forum a nonexclusive license:
   a) To use and modify this work for noncommercial purposes.
   b) To post modifications to this forum.
   c) To share physical objects made from these works with others, as long as there is no compensation, financial or otherwise.
3. You retain the right to grant other licenses to other people as you see fit.

No right is granted to share this work or modifications to it outside this forum.

By using a creative work posted by another forum member, you agree not to share that work or your modifications outside this forum, or to use the work or your modifications for any commercial purposes. You also agree that you will share physical objects made from these works with others only as long as there is no direct or indirect compensation, financial or otherwise, in exchange.

[jeffreyp]

I’d probably assume personal only.

Also - there is a difference between commercial use and resale use (especially for things like Creative Commons).

For example from an art website that has a subscription for commercial use and a pay x for 100 uses for resale:

“if you download an icon and use it on the front of the tshirt, that icon is contributing to the success of selling your tshirt and is therefore considered an item for Resale. But if you use the icon on the tag to mark that it can be ironed, that is considered Commercial Use.”

[jbmanning5]

It’s safer to default to thinking along the lines of a license tells you how you can use an asset, not explicitly how you can’t use it.

In the absence of not telling you how you can use it, the safest bet is to use as personal use only.

[ChristyM]

All excellent info, especially the part about the difference between commercial use and resale use.

Always err on the side of caution. You should have a license in writing before using anything in a commercial venture. Basically, when a lawyer send you a letter that says you owe $###,### for using something without permission, you want to know you have clear proof of license.

[Techniack]

Licenses such as the creative common license will allow you to reproduce/edit/modify and sell any items marked by it. Just ensure that the license supports monetization.

Excerpt from the Creative Commons License page (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/. Many of these licenses are easy to spot are easy to understand. Let me know if you have any questions. Disclaimer: I am NOT a lawyer! This is all to the best of my knowledge. Please contact the original creator for more information

Attribution
CC BY

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

Attribution-ShareAlike
CC BY-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

Attribution-NoDerivs
CC BY-ND

This license lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.

Attribution-NonCommercial
CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

[Xabbess]

@ChristyM

especially the part about the difference between commercial use and resale use.

Don’t we know, Christy…dang Noun Project.

[ChristyM]

@Xabbess

dang Noun Project

YES.

[ryan.niemer]

Pretty sure that if you buy a design from someone, and it doesn’t clearly say that you can use it in whatever way you want, aka modify and sell products made from that design, then you cannot just cut something with that design and pass it off as your own. However, if you buy a design and the seller says you MAY use this in any way you see fit, or explicitly states you can use it for profit, then you should be good. You can never, however, buy a design and try to sell it as your own.