Your nonprofit is building a website. The web designer finds a great image that embodies your nonprofit’s mission exactly. The web designer downloads the image from a website of a nonprofit that does similar work, and the other nonprofit has provided an email saying they don’t mind if you use the image.
True or false: Based on this you are free to use the image with no risk of being sued for intellectual property infringement.
Christopher Reed serves as Corporate Counsel for Nonprofits Insurance Alliance. Prior to that Christopher held legal, engineering, operations, and professional services roles at Borland, University of California, EPRI, Nokia, and the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He has developed courseware and exam materials for exams used internationally including for certification of Borland developer tools like Delphi, C++ Builder, and JBuilder. Christopher has volunteered with IEEE including leading the Data Modeling subgroup or IEEE 2030 standard for securing the utility grid. He earned a JD and a BSEE and is a member of the California Bar and a Licensed patent attorney with the USPTO.
Articles on Blue Avocado do not provide legal representation or legal advice and should not be used as a substitute for advice or legal counsel. Blue Avocado provides space for the nonprofit sector to express new ideas. Views represented in Blue Avocado do not necessarily express the opinion of the publication or its publisher.
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