Legally displaying another programs icon

Question

I'm making an app which controls other applications. I am displaying different program icons to identify which application the user is controlling.

I never save the icons or distribute them. The app finds the image from the users computer only when the program is running.

Are there any legal implications here? If I were to advertise my app by posting screenshots which display another programs icon, does that infringe upon any copyrights?

I was looking at this question but I wasn't really sure if that answers my question or not. I know next to nothing about legal matters.

Answer 1

Assuming that the answer on your linked question from User Experience is correct, your questions are basically identical to each other.

Generally, logo's are used to identify a product. Many software organizations actually encourage you to use them to identify their items. They will generally come with guidelines that dictate how they can be used: Here are Microsoft's guidelines as an example.

If you're querying the Windows APIs to find the images, you should just about be fine. You're not necessarily distributing them, and you're using it to identify a product that is not yours.