Do I need written permission from MATHWORKS for my MATLAB/Simulink book to publish it?

So, I have included in my book: MATLAB ® and Simulink ® are trademarks of the MathWorks, Inc. Is it sufficient?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

We are not qualified to talk about legal matters here. I suggest you contact http://www.mathworks.com/support/books/join.html

[Walter Roberson]

Reminder: the below is not advice from your lawyer.

In my jurisdiction, if you wrote a book that happened to mention MATLAB, then an acknowledgement such as "MATLAB ® and Simulink ® are trademarks of the MathWorks, Inc." would be sufficient.

For example you might write a memoir about your university days, about how you and your house-mates used to stay up long nights drinking tea with rum and writing MATLAB programs -- then an acknowlement such as that would be all that is needed.

In my jurisdiction, If you wrote a book in which you included MATLAB code that you wrote (or which you had permission from the authors of the code) then you would fall under the section of the Mathworks license that makes it clear that MATLAB code you write [with some limitations] is yours to do with what you want -- to publish, sell, give-away, make a movie about.

However, if you were to write a book in which you included screenshots of the MATLAB graphics interfaces (such as the editor) then those potentially need more permission from Mathworks to publish. Even more so, if you were to write a book in which you included extracts of code that is marked as copyrighted by Mathworks, you might (more often than not) need permission from Mathworks.

I say "potentially" because in my jurisdiction, copyright law contains exceptions for critical analysis provided that the amount copied is small in comparison to the overall size of what is being copied. The more heavily you analyze the item being copied, the more leeway you have to copy. For example, if you were to write a book about "dark patterns" in MATLAB, then pointing out wording and font choices and glyphs and sub-menus in detail would be fair game. So case law might have developed guidelines, but the exact boundaries are not written into law in my jurisdiction.

If you were in the USA, then the details of the bounds are different, as are the details of how much effort you would be required to seek permission in advance. If you were in the UK, the restrictions would be different yet, even if the general principles are the same. Germany and Denmark have some interesting differences (that would not typically be important in this situation, but could potentially be.)