checking copyright on international symbols

[fredster]

Sorry if in wrong place but i have been asked if i can do some tshirts with the international symbol for irony on them... does anyone know if this is copyrighted for use or not? it looks like a backwards question mark.
a certain celeb wore one on a sweatshirt recently and as such one if his fans wants one making up..
help please

[Draner]

"In Arabic and languages that use Arabic script and were influenced by the Arabic language such as Persian and Urdu, which are written from right to left, the question mark ؟ is mirrored right-to-left from the English question mark. (Some browsers may display the character in the previous sentence as a forward question mark due to font or text directionality issues.) Hebrew is also written right-to-left, but it uses a question mark that appears on the page in the same orientation as the Roman-alphabet question mark.[9]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirrored_q ... stion_mark

Im no copyright expert but I think it would be difficult to copyright a character the properly pre dates copyright.

[fredster]

thats what i thought too andy.. thanks for that

[Matt Quinn]

Sorry if in wrong place but i have been asked if i can do some tshirts with the international symbol for irony on them... does anyone know if this is copyrighted for use or not? it looks like a backwards question mark.
a certain celeb wore one on a sweatshirt recently and as such one if his fans wants one making up..
help please

The answer is that the character may not be - if it's part of an 'alphabet' or a word character (such as in Chinese) BUT the 'font' or the actual graphic for the symbol itself may well be!

Draw up your own version of the symbol and then YOU own the copyright to it...