Legality of using Windows icons...

[moire music]

I'm currently creating buttons and icons for the Torquescript IDE that my company has been developing called Torsion (http://www.sickheadgames.com/torsion.php). I'm the artist on this project, and my current task is to create 16x16 px art for all the buttons and icons in the app before the full release. I'm wondering what the legality is of using some of the 16x16 icons that you see in the Windows operating system like folders, files, printer icons, etc.

It's not that I'm lazy and don't want to create new icons... in fact I already have. And as an artist my first inclination was to redo every icon from scratch and to never use someone else's work. It's just that from a productivity standpoint, I think it would be much more intuitive for the user if , for instance, folder trees in the app had the same icons as folder trees in Windows. Seems like the similarity would allow for more productivity for the end user, so I thought it was something I should investigate.

Is there a precedence for this? Any thoughts?

[MibUK]

I am not a lawyer, but...

Everything distributed with the Operating system is covered under international and US copyright law (as is stated in windows installer, terms and conditions etc.). That means you absolutely cannot redistribute someone elses work, including the icons in windows, it's copyright infringement.

However, you may be able to work around it, by not distributing the icons with the game, but making the game read from windows when its run. That way you are not distributing the icons, but are simply accessing what is available on the operating system. That would be allowed. (although you say that your the artist, thats the programmers job to do that).

There are also a number of free (as in Open source) icon sets available, there is something called Project Tango that aims to provide stylish SVG free icons for linux distributions, but they should be possible to use within a game. AS would any icons from any other open source application.

[Indiepath]

Purchase some instead : http://www.istockphoto.com/my_lightbox_contents.php?lightboxID=1175891

[Paul-Jan]

If you own Microsoft Visual Studio (or a similar developmnent package), you are licensed to re-use a restricted set of standard icons as provided with that package. Review the redistributable section of the appropriate EULA for more details.

[barrygamer]

Dunno if this is any use, but I've used this xp-style icon set before:
http://www.glyfx.com/free.html
Theres a basic free set + packs of other icons to buy etc.

[moire music]

@MibUK - thanks! Using the operating system's genuine icons is a fantastic idea.

@barrygamer - I looked at the free "Common" set at the site you posted, and I must say... a number of those 16x16 icons are exactly the same as XP icons. I'm a little afraid to use any of those for that reason. I've sent them an email to clarify how they can offer icons identical to Microsoft's.

@Paul-Jan - Visual Studio was used. Looking into this as well for some icons.

[NielsK]

There's a bit of information specifically about icon copyrights on the MS site: http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/permissions/default.mspx#E4D

[moire music]

I received an interesting response from the GlyFX people about the remarkable similarity between some of their "Common Toolbar Set" of icons and the standard Windows XP icons:

"These icons have been out there for over 4 years, and Microsoft themselves have purchased them. The style guide for XP allows the re-use of key elements of the icons, but nevertheless ours are subtlely different, as each icon was drawn by hand. You can use these without worrying, just like about 10,000 other developers who have downloaded them."

So that answers a lot! GlyFX's icons are legal to use and close enough to (or exactly like) the Windows icons that they are more intuitive for users within my app. Thanks all for the help.

[barrygamer]

Cool. I kinda figured Glyfx were legit, they've been around for many years. Very odd that MS bought icons too, I imagined they had permanent in-house icon makers slaving away :confused:
NB I recall the terms of usage state you must compile-in, not leave them as loose files.

[EDIT: that Tango project has some quality stuff also, just checked it out]