Monday, February 23, 2009

Legal Considerations

Since this blog is about a commercial product and I plan to include screenshots in the publication, I spent some time researching the General Microsoft Trademark Guidelines today.  The guidelines are pretty clear cut, but I'm somewhat surpised at how restrictive some of the requirements are. For instance, in their guidance on Screen Shots, Microsoft states that
You may not alter the screen shot in any way except to resize the screen shot. You may not use portions of the screen shots, and you may not include portions of a screen shot in your product user interface.
What if I wanted to draw a red arrow on the screen shot? I guess I'll have to do my best.