Quote from Greboth :

My view on this is that while yes it is illegal to use copyright material without permission I don't see a problem with this. While I can't see any of the companies would pay to have their sponsorship on your car, by you having the sponso logo on your car you are giving them free advertising. ...

Not necessarily.
I know a league that got into serious troubles broadcasting their races, so they enforced to have the permission of the sponsors on the skins.
And quite a few companies didn't hand out permissions (even when they were shown really great designs) because they can't really "control" the team and their behavior. If you get a permission, it's often very limited (Company X allows driver Y to use their logo only on skin Z)

Quote from Gerdoner :

Not necessarily.
I know a league that got into serious troubles broadcasting their races, so they enforced to have the permission of the sponsors on the skins.
And quite a few companies didn't hand out permissions (even when they were shown really great designs) because they can't really "control" the team and their behavior. If you get a permission, it's often very limited (Company X allows driver Y to use their logo only on skin Z)

then im just curious, what about mtv3 max that broadcasted some races and if the racers had their own skin with this technically illegal stuff on it

Quote from Rotareneg :

Actually, that deals with trademark law, not copyright law.

In the USA, logo's are covered under trademark law, since copyright laws don't cover symbols that closely resemble actual trademarked logos, but trademark laws do (for example to prevent "knock-off" items such as purse that looks like a Gucci purse). Trademarks aren't automatic though, they have to be filed.

Single words and short phrases can't be copyrighted. Short phrases are difficult to trademark. Then there are the fair use laws in the USA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

The closest thing to a standard is the youtube standard. Generally as long as credit or a link is given for the source to a video, there's no issue. If there is a complaint about video content, youtube will ask the poster to counter the claim or to remove the video.

Youtube does some automatic screening, based on keywords in the titles or descriptions of posted videos, but not the actual video content. However the auto-screening has been an issue, for example, Viacom was tagging "tomb raider underworld trailer", even though they were only one of several companies making these trailers. It became a moot point when the game itself included a high quality version of the main trailer as an intro video (since Eidos then owned the rights and didn't have any issues with the intro being posted).

It's isn't infringment until someone complains or includes some type of clause where it's shown, such as the clauses about not re-broadcasting sports events shown on TV, or the do not copy clauses on games or videos. At the other end, GNU licensing uses copyright to prevent any infringement claims. So the legality depends on the claims regarding infringment or potential infringment.

Bottom line, I doubt any company is going to complain about a logo used in a niche market racing game.

Quote from jaxx751 :

Maybe I'm missing something, but I didn't think you could import full blown logos into forza. Anything that is in Forza is obviously licensed.

You can use the layers system to make your own logos.

Link to a sticky thread contai ... ivery competition winners

Most of those have plenty of marking that isn't in the game.