The email TfL sent [1] to traintimes.org.uk ISP looks like a catch-all sent in haste. For example, it doesn't even mention the map. Instead, it invokes trademark registration numbers but these resolve [2] to LONDON UNDERGROUND and UNDERGROUND wordmarks and the roundel, none of them covering the map geometry as far as I can tell. It alleges a violation under Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act [3] but the act only applies to domains - and TfL never claims "traintimes" to be an infringing domain name (certainly doesn't look so under the marks cited). And, as a sibling comment points out, the act is a U.S. law but the site appears to be hosted in the U.K.
If you think you have a case about the map, why not state it explicitly? The cynical answer is that ISPs have incentives not to care so making a case doesn't matter but ...
[1] https://traintimes.org.uk/map/tube/email2.txt [2] One can look them up in https://www.tmdn.org/tmview [3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1125
I don’t see the issue. You were using the TfL schematic map which is very much a form of art. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that they asked you to take that specific map down or continue with a license.
To remove the whole site because of that seems petty.
It was clearly stated in their api documentation. It’s no different than getting a license or usage rights for hosting an image or video on your site. Just because you are a hobbyist doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow the rules.
This is coming from someone who is extremely pro fair-use and right to ownership.
> To remove the whole site because of that seems petty.
How have they removed the whole site? It literally says "My traintimes.org.uk is still there." at the bottom of the page. Looks like only the maps have been removed.
(Edited to add: I'm a long time traintimes.org.uk user who never even realised they had maps on the site, so consequently I am happy the whole site has not been taken down)
They could have easily offered a free license to use the trademark. This project wasn't harming them in the slightest. Demanding the map's removal and implying that he will have to pay to put it back up shows a lack of empathy.
No, trademarks are genuinely important because they allow consumers to distinguish between official things that an organization stands behind, versus hobbyist projects, imitators, etc.
But all the creator had to do was to remove logos and possibly change the name so there would be no confusion around whether this was an official project or not.
And it seems like the geographic map was fine, only the schematic map would have been an issue because its design is presumably specifically copyrighted and yes you would have to license that just like any other map.
The letters he received may have been heavy-handed but there's nothing wrong with the general principle of it.
The point is that trademark holders could start by reaching out and asking nicely instead of being assholes about it.
To be fair, they did start by reaching out and asking nicely. They just immediately escalated.
The TfL trademarks are all over Apple Maps. The map itself would be covered by copyright, not trademark.
It would seem that nobody bothered to run the notice past a lawyer.
Apple applied to use them via the official TFL scheme for doing so, in advance, and is likely paying for them.
This is particularly galling because TfL never credited or compensated the designer of the map, Harry Beck, until long after his death.
> You were using the TfL schematic map which is very much a form of art
The site was taken down by a trademark complaint, not a copyright complaint.
Trademarks apply to artistic works that identify an entity. See the TFL roundel.
You can use a logo to refer to the entity in question. Is it not fair use if you refer to a subway station using the subway station logo?
No. If using a plain text word suffices, then that's all you get.
My wife is an IP attorney at a large UK based law firm. We have discussed this exact thing before (in this thread).
She worked on a client matter for a banking app that wanted to show the logo of each company next to the transaction. This was not cleared by legal given that the law only allows for the bare minimum reference.
I think it's dumb because a logo is faster to see in a list vs. text, but it doesn't matter. I think IP laws are so backwards in the modern era, but thems the rules.
Someone should tell Wise. My list of payments has the logos of TfL, ASDA, Tesco, Sainsbury and others next to the payments.
Apple Maps also uses the logos when you bring up location details.
Those businesses may have enrolled in Apple Business Connect or otherwise made an agreement to show their trademarks inside the Maps app. Or the Maps app is showing the store’s app, and their app icon includes their trademark. (One of the requirements of submitting your app to the App Store is granting Apple a license to use your app’s icon.)
I am not a lawyer, much less a trademark lawyer, so I don’t think I can reasonably try answer this question.
It should be easy for a human at TfL to make an assessment on something like this, see the autistic and technical value, and offer a free but heavily restricted license to the developer.
But is suppose many organisations just don't give people the autonomy and authority to do such tings.
For that specific map, based on what the email he got sent from TfL said, I don't think they directly have permission to issue that license - their site says people have to go through the partner who produced the schematic art to get a license
Except the schematic art is covered by copyright, not trademark.
On their website, TfL says both things:
1. The map is covered by copyright.
2. The only way to get a license is to buy one from their map partner.
> We protect the map under copyright and officially license it for brands and businesses to reproduce it.
> To use the map in your design, you must have the permission of our map licensing partner, Pindar Creative. This is the only way to officially license the map, no matter how you'd like to use it.
Yet, they don't even mention the case you might be a third-party developer providing a non-profit service.
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/business-and-advertisers/map-lic...
> For registered charities and schools, the licence is royalty free, but we still charge an artwork fee of £352 + VAT
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/business-and-advertisers/using-t...
> For registered charities and schools, the licence is royalty free, but we still charge an artwork fee of £352 + VAT
Institution funded by taxpayers charging institutions funded by donors and taxpayers. Be nice if there were any value being added, rather than just exchanged.
If TfL hasn't bought the full rights to their map layouts, the shame is on them.
autistic value? Trains? I see what you did there?
s/autistic/artistic
I violated my own rule of always re-reading a post 5 min after posting it...
there is such a gap between hobbyist developers that do things for fun if and only if it stays fun, and consumers who will qualify as petty the reasonable decisions to pursue some other one of the very many other things-to-do-for-free that could be more fun.
don't you think?
To own the trademark and defend it means having to proactively find and fight violations. So, nope.
How is the trademark holder supposed to know who they are dealing with? Because they said so? Well, in that case I know a Nigerian prince who would like to send you some money…
This is the thing. Most people don't know that in order to keep your brand, you have to continually use it and defend it.
In a similar vein, the lawyers of the popular "hook and loop fasteners" Velcro constantly try and defend their IP so it doesn't become generic.
This is like claiming you need to license the Mercator projection.
The TFL tube map is almost 100 years old[0] and while we can argue if industrial design is "art" the main point of the tube map is utilitarian - to help people navigate the underground.
[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00087041.2021.1...
So copyright should only apply to stuff that’s not useful?
Whatever the term of copyright should be, there’s no doubt that it was a significant endeavour to create it, and it creatively expresses the topography of London.
Your analogy doesn’t work very well I’m afraid. The Mercator projection is 500 years old, and generally speaking, you can only copyright specific works, not processes. If you want to protect a process from being used by others commercially, you need a patent, and generally patents are not as long lived as copyright.
No, but it's far more likely that fair use applies to something that is more _useful_ than _creative_, ie: maps and dictionaries.
Regardless of how much effort a copyrighted work to produce, most Western countries have a fair-use equivalent to transformative use of a work: https://lawdit.co.uk/readingroom/intellectual-property-law-g....
Odd that this site is a “.co.uk” but talks about the US fair use doctrine. The UK does indeed have “fair use” (actually called fair dealing) but this wouldn’t come under it as far as I can tell (IANAL, etc.)
The copyright exceptions in the UK are very limited. There would not be a copyright exception in this situation.
Copyright exists to incentivize creators to make more art.
In the case of "utility" works like maps, charts, diagrams, there is already ample motivation to create them – people want to be able to navigate, scientists want others to understand their data, etc.
The first email asking to remove a single map from a sub-feature of the website is very reasonable.
The second email sent an hour later requesting the hosting provider immediately suspend the entire domain was not.
Eh, if your complaint comes 15 years after the site is launched, and then you wait an hour before following up with a legal notice, I’d be feeling petty too.
> To remove the whole site because of that seems petty.
Maybe, but TFA explains that it's not being petty, just lack of time and resources.
This licensing page appears to be a new addition to TfL, which probably suggests some bureaucrat negotiated a deal with a creative agency to license the tube map for pennies on the dollar, resulting in them sending out these notices.
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/business-and-advertisers/map-lic...
Amusingly the notice was sent with references to USA trademark law.
I am not sure how it works with regional governments, but copyright information for government-produced works tends to live as a "crown copyright" in the UK and former colonies.
I don't think this scheme is a recent addition, I've seen it years ago
I wasn't able to locate a previous scrape of it on archive.org.
It's a sad irony that TFL didn't even want this version of the map originally, and it was given to them, and maintained for free (I think) by a map enthusiast like the author of this version
I think Harry Beck would think history was repeating itself
To be fair they explicitly state don't use their branding in the API documentation. They made £200K in 2024 from licensing - I think about a millionth of a penny per journey
https://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-advertising-annual-report-202...
200k?
That seems very little to be honest. Who is licensing what from the London Metro?
I’m m wondering if it’s people putting the tube map on things. There is an application form and guidelines.
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/business-and-advertisers/contact...
If that is indeed the actual number, it most certainly has deeply negative ROI.
There is no way they are running a licensing department for under £200kpa.
This STINKS of 'new person in the job with no personal connection or background to certain relationships, and crucially, allowances, established by the previous person, wants to test/establish their power in new role and is looking for easy ways to do it'
The Dolores Umbridge Effect
It’s CRITAAS proliferation. Copyright infringement takedown as a service. It only feels unfair because right now it’s asymmetric. Wait until there is an automatic SAAS to counter balance it and let the bots duel it out whilst laws eventually catch up.
In case you ever wondered how can some people be against trademarks and copyrights in general.
Itch.io was taken down recently be an over-zealous AI-based service to detect trademark infringement and notify the authority, I wonder if this is a similar case. It'd be nice to know if someone in TFL actually requested this, or if it's a case of fanatical legal enforcement as a service.
This is a perfectly legit application of copyright law/brand protection, and I'm no fan of either. The Tube map is copyrighted work that requires a license to be used, even on a free service. The fellow should have stuck to normal OSM overlays, and none of this would have happened.
What is controversial about this?
If they want to control who uses the roundel logo, so be it, but I think it's absurd that copyright applies to the tube map itself.
In the United States, government works like this would be public domain.
The map is a work of design in its own right, it is not a mere geographical representation. Also, while it would be nice if government work were public domain in the UK as it is in the US, that is sadly not the case, and we have to deal with it.
It's extremely simple. The Tube map shouldn't be a copyrighted work that requires a license to be used.
You're judging the copyright enforcement action by itself in a void, but it's not in a void.
Except it's actually trademark? It's ridiculous to apply trademark law here. No consumer confusion is happening.
> The Tube map shouldn't be a copyrighted work
Why not? Mind you I'm not saying any tube map, but the official TfL one.
The official government maps are exactly the ones that everyone should be able to copy everywhere. It's basic information about the government department, and that is not something to seek rent on.
I would complain to TfL, but their complaints form is broken
> Sorry, something's gone wrong We have a technical problem right now. One of the following options might help you:
Just want to say how much I appreciate traintimes.org.uk
It's perfect
Compare to National Rail that has a pointless loading page, uses the entire initial viewport to show anything but the train times, and search is weirdly stateful. Just terrible all round
Thanks Matthew
TFL has obviously been aware of his use for 15 years, as the website was widely publicised in 2010. They have not taken any action to defend any trademarks they think he violates in all that time. IANAL, but I would have thought that if he wanted, he probably has a good case to invalidate those trademarks on the grounds that by not defending them for so long, they have become generic. But in the end, it's probably not a good use of his time and money to fight them on this.
Many years back, it was a thing that TfL actively encouraged developers to use their data, and I was lucky to be a winner of a notional campaign thanks to that.
But now, the headwinds apparently have changed. Sad :(
> Many years back, it was a thing that TfL actively encouraged developers to use their data
They still do but not the branding:
"Use our data - not our brand" https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/open-data-users/design-and-brand...
However, the map layout is data, not branding. If your service has to alter the layout, it's more confusing to the passengers who TfL should be thinking about.
It has a very unique look and feel, and I'm not sure it is "just" data given that the location of stations on the tube map doesn't actually correspond to their geographic locations within London. I do think it is capable of forming part of the TfL brand, though by now it feels quite generic to me.
Regardless of whether the map is capable of being protected by IP law (TfL certainly seem to think it is), this just feels stingy and pointless on TfL's part. They are a public service after all, and these maps arguably furthered their public mission. Given how popular the map is I would much prefer they published it under a licence allowing free non-commercial use with attribution (including a statement that the user is not affiliated with TfL).
I was wondering what disappeared, I think it's this: https://web.archive.org/web/20241204060614/http://traintimes...
Strange enough the owner also seems to have removed the OpenStreetMap-based live train maps. Those can't be copyrighted?
Between that and CityMapper being part of the Gravy leak, things look pretty bleak for UK third party transit apps.
>CityMapper being part of the Gravy leak
You should take that leak with a huge grain of salt because the alleged list of apps stealing your location contains hundreds of apps that doesn't even contain location permissions.
This is a bit of an incorrect read on what this leak is. Gravy gathers location data about people from multiple sources but not directly from consumers. Gravy’s customers buy this data.
As far as I understand, this is a list of locations and apps used by a person, but without much context. A typical response to this has been something like this:
> Grindr has never worked with or provided data to Gravy Analytics. We do not share data with data aggregators or brokers and have not shared geolocation with ad partners for many years. Transparency is at the core of our privacy program, therefore the third parties and service providers we work with are listed here on our website.
Note how carefully written this is to imply they don’t share any data at all, but they stop short of saying “we don’t share any data with ad partners”, just geolocation data.
But for companies like Gravy, their whole business is about getting data.
So it’s not at all implausible (or even unlikely) that this represents an event where a user opened Grindr (conceivably sold to Gravy by one of Grindr’s ad partners following an impression), and the same individual’s location was determined by some other method (for example, IP address geolookup, or bought from a company which IS supplying data to Gravy directly and has location permissions).
Take the leak with a grain of salt, sure, but it’s looking reasonably genuine to me.
>So it’s not at all implausible (or even unlikely) that this represents an event where a user opened Grindr (conceivably sold to Gravy by one of Grindr’s ad partners following an impression), and the same individual’s location was determined by some other method (for example, IP address geolookup, or bought from a company which IS supplying data to Gravy directly and has location permissions).
There's a pretty big difference between "grindr sells your inferred information from IP" and "citymapper sold your location data". Even though the latter technically could be limited to the former, it's pretty obvious that most people think it's selling your precise location as determined by GPS or whatever. Just look at the other replies to my comments if you don't believe me. This is important, because not all "location data" is the same. People are far more likely to be creeped out by precise location data than ip location data, and you're basically constantly transmitting the latter every time you use any app/website.
> We (...) have not shared geolocation data with ad partners for many years
Mobile operating systems don't have good (if any) support for opening things in subprocesses with restricted permissions from the rest of the app. So if Grindr loads an ad, that ad runs with Grindr's permissions. Same for any analytics code that ad uses. So if Grindr gets geolocation, even temporarily, so does every ad partner they have, whether they like it or not.
And the thing is, ads are a bottomless pit of third-party JavaScript. Nobody trusts nobody in the ad space, so everyone wants their own trackers doing their own client-side data collection. So Grindr doesn't have to know anything about Gravy Analytics, they just have to have an ad partner decide to use them and bam, they're compromised.
>Mobile operating systems don't have good (if any) support for opening things in subprocesses with restricted permissions from the rest of the app. [...]
>And the thing is, ads are a bottomless pit of third-party JavaScript. [...]
If it's actually javascript, attempting to grab location would result in a weird location prompt[1] that shows even if you granted the app location permission. It's still conceivable for a random SDK to go rogue and exfiltrate location data, but it's unlikely that an ad in a webview would be able to.
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39665367/how-to-prevent-...
That's the whole reason companies like Gravy exist—they call it 'location intelligence', they make inferences about location based on various things they do have access to, rather than necessarily directly collecting it from the user using GPS location tracking.
Yeah, that's what they all say. Tinder and Spotify were both named specifically and both denied it. I don't trust any of them so I'm assuming they're lying, you do what you want.
Why do you trust an unverified "leak" over statements made by multi-billion dollar multinationals? Sure, corporations can lie, but so can such leaks. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If the leak is alleging something impossible (ie. stealing location data despite not having location permissions in manifest), then I'd need far more evidence than some csv list.
Trust me, I wouldn’t lie to you for a billion dollars.
I might have been caught lying before about these things but this time it’s different.
Not OP, but…
I trust a leak from someone with no financial gain from the leak.
I do not trust multi nationals worth several million, billion, trillion, to state truth. I expect them to lie until caught by a federal entity and fined.
Guess how many times multi nationals lied to the public last year alone.
Now you answer: “Why do you put any trust in what statements a corp releases?!”
>I trust a leak from someone with no financial gain from the leak.
>I do not trust multi nationals worth several million, billion, trillion, to state truth. I expect them to lie until caught by a federal entity and fined.
>Guess how many times multi nationals lied to the public last year alone.
And what about the leak itself? "You really think someone would do that, just go on the internet and tell lies?"
Here's an anonymous "leak" I found that says whatsapp is backdoored and sends your chats to the CCP: https://pastebin.com/uE4m694M . Are you going to believe it? If asked for comment, Meta is probably going to deny it, but obviously they're going to be lying for the reasons you mentioned.
>Now you answer: “Why do you put any trust in what statements a corp releases?!”
"Trust" isn't binary, it's a spectrum. I don't put much trust in corp releases, but I still trust them far more than an unverified source. Even if you put zero weight on "statements a corp releases", you can inspect the AOSP source code yourself and see that it shouldn't be possible for apps to steal your location data when it doesn't have location permissions, and therefore a list claiming that such apps are stealing your location data should be treated with extreme skepticism.
> Why do you trust an unverified "leak" over statements made by multi-billion dollar multinationals?
Less incentives to lie.
Edit: I had a think, and what I picked up on was the idea that sheer concentration of money might stand in as a signal for trust, and so whether somone with more money would naturally be more honest or dishonest than someone with less, is really more of an interesting question.
Is not whenever they deny it or not, your device can attest to it. Both Google and Apple have no qualms screwing up with third parties in their apps. Also, apps have been datamined up the wazoo, if a company claims not to do something and does it, someone would have already howled about it.
Or just host it in a country that doesn't care about UK law.
Doesn't really work when you are an individual who lives in the UK.
This feels a bit overzealous, "just" somebody following the letter of the job rather than the spirit of it over at TfL.
I can see how it sort of happened though. TfL makes money from licensing The roundels and other ephemera are popular. From tourists buying licensed souvenirs, and other transport authorities licensing the signage system in use in their own regions, that is used to invest in the system as a whole (worth noting: TfL is not a private entity, it's non-profit making, everything it makes goes back into investment).
Because of that popularity there are a lot of people who try and rip off the TfL brand and trademarks. Lots of tourist souvenir shops might be minded to get their own take on this material, and have some cheaply made and expensively sold to tourists, for example. Another transport authority might skip the millions invested in thinking about how to communicate clearly, and just "lift" TfL's thinking. That obviously isn't fair, if you think IP law is able to be fair in any way.
So, yeah, there are people whose job it is to protect that revenue and protect the trademarked and copyright material that protect that revenue.
But this is a hobbyist having fun. I don't think anybody thought that this was a service provided by TfL, and I can't expect he was making much of a living from it, or depriving TfL of revenue.
It's really rather tragically sad that we're now in a World where good intentions on all sides can't really see each other. There is so much utter penny-and-dime theft and copyright infringing shit on the internet that requires constant purging by people who are expected to protect their own trademarks, that the assumption now is everybody is trying to make money off everyone else, and nobody wants to do any actual original work any more.
I hope someone at TfL sees the light and comes up with a better license for use of their assets, and sees this for what it is, and reverses the decision. I doubt that'll happen, though. :(
I think TfL should focus more on the "transport" part of their business.
> I think TfL should focus more on the "transport" part of their business.
I imagine they'd love to if they weren't constantly shafted by Government Du Jour when it comes to funding.
I commuted the NJ/USA daily for a while and loved - https://njtranshit.com/ - there's always room for sites that deliver something extra to the official one :)
Copyright laws need a reform.
[dead]
> But I believe it is possible to both “protect” your trademark (or whatever you think this is) and not treat people like this.
They probably do not like the way they are treated by having their artwork/maps/trademarks taken without permission when they might well offer it for free for good causes / hobbyists.
I'm guessing there is some copyright notice they require too in the license to protect themselves.
I don't know if they do or not, but just pointing out the hypocrisy.
Seems the OP would rather keep their site down than ask so i guess we won't know.