Font Raid Spells Trouble for Publisher

rs232 writes to tell us The Register is reporting on a publishing firm that got fined for using unlicensed fonts. The firm claimed to only be actively using one font, but was found to be using approximately 11,000. In addition to their font headaches, the firm was also found to be unlicensed on 95% of their Adobe software and 75% of their Microsoft software — talk about a bad week.

Comments

Fonts = Typefaces = not protected in the USA

[StateOfTheUnion]

Though the situation from the article happened in the UK, I think that US law differs in that fonts or typefaces have no legal protection. Because of this, in the US one would be able to copy fonts to their heart's content . . . Ironic that the home of the MPAA and RIAA and DMCA has no protection for typefaces . . .

Re:Fonts = Typefaces = not protected in the USA

[avalys]

In the US, you can copyright the program that draws a font: i.e. the Truetype font definition file.

However, you cannot copyright the font design itself: meaning, if someone wants to design their own font that looks exactly like yours, they're free to do so.

I'm guessing what this company did falls into the former category, which would still be illegal in the US.

Re:Wha...?

[Daniel_Staal]

It's not that hard, actually. Remember that high-end fonts (which is what I'm assuming we are talking about here) have seperate faces for bold, italic, bold-italic, smallcaps, 'light', 'display', 'caption', and any and all combinations of the above. One font-family can easily include thirty or so fonts, all of which are sold seperately. (Or, of course, you can buy the bundle. But if you don't acutally need the caption-oblique version and a few others it might not be worth the whole bundle.)

So, a couple hundred font-families is several thousand actual fonts. For a publishing house, where you need the right font for every occasion, that's a small collection.

Re:Wha...?

[DragonWriter]

A "font" and a "type face" aren't the same thing. While modern computers can do "good enough"mdash;for casual use, at least—extrapolations of different sizes and styles from a single font, professional publishers are going to use a distinct font (with appearance tweaks) for each different combination of face, style, and type size. Times-12pt-Roman isn't the same font as Times-12pt-Italic, Times-10pt-Roman, etc. It doesn't take a whole lot of different faces, sizes, and styles to get up around 11,000 fonts.

Actually, typefaces cannot be copyrighted...

[msauve]

unless things have changed since the US Copyright office, stated

Both the Congress and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Eltra Corp. v. Ringer decided that analog typeface designs are not now copyright subject matter. The Copyright Office concludes that typefaces created by a computerized-digital process are also uncopyrightable. Like analog typefaces, digitally created typefaces exhibit no creative authorship apart from the utilitarian shapes that are formed to compose letters or other font characters.

Re:Promotion of Science and the Useful Fonts?

[DragonWriter]

I know this is a silly semantic point, and maybe a bit off topic, but copyright-able material != "intellectual property".

Its not a "silly semantic point", its an ideological crusade dressed up in semantic clothing. While technically, perhaps, correct (insofar as, pedantically, copyrightable material isn't necessarily intellectual property, copyrighted material, however, is, and all copyrightable material not expressly placed in the public domain is also copyrighted material), its inaccurate in its message.

Intellectual property is an ideology that implies that ideas should be treated like physical goods in that they can have one owner that controls it.

No, "intellectual property" is not an "ideology" of any kind. "Intellectual property" is a class of actual, existing legal rights (a component of the somewhat broader category of "intangible personal property".)

In the "natural order of things" there is a differece: ideas can be easily reproduced or shared among people and physical goods cannot.

Physical goods (and even moreso real property) can be easily shared among people as well; the existence of propietary rights, whether in tangible personal property, intangible personal property, or real property has nothing to do with whether or not they can be "shared" or "reproduced" in the "natural order of things", but with the social judgement that protection of a proprietary interest in those things enriches the community by encouraging the development of wealth that would otherwise not be developed.

Further, except for patents specifically, the subject matter of IP rights aren't "ideas".

So in the last few centuries many governments have granted creators of works abilities to control copying of their ideas, but with a limited time span and scope.

Both tangible personal property and real property being held for more than a limited time and with the free control we associated with modern ownership is also fairly new; grants for a period, or for life, of land from the government (some overlord) were common, and even personal property returning to a governing authority on death who had some practical discretion on whether or not to allow it to be inherited for a fee were not uncommon.

And when land wasn't granted for a period of time, it was often granted in fee tail where it was designated by the grantor to fall to the grantee's natural heirs and to revert to the grantor if the natural line failed.

Most people that take someone's physical property deprive them of it, which is why for millenia stealing of physical goods has been illegal in many societies.

Since "property" is merely an exclusive power over some thing, someone who takes your "intellectual property" deprives you of it no less than someone who takes your "physical property".

Using the term "intellectual property" conditions people to think of ideas like property.

Using the term "intellectual property" conditions people, if it does so at all, to think of the rights people possess over the subject matters of "intellectual property" (generally, not "ideas") as similar to the rights owners possess over other kinds of property, which they are.

They forget the limitations of copyright law and they forget that naturally ideas can be shared. That copyright came to be not out of a desire to protect the rights of creators but to promote the advancement of arts and sciences.

You seem to fail to realize that all property rights are social inventions to protect, and thereby encourage, the development of wealth on the presumption that its accumulation and development will redound to the common good.

Re:the beast of the nature

[TheGavster]

It's interesting you should mention it that way. When I installed the Windows Vista Beta, there was a segment in the EULA expressly saying that you can't copy the fonts, except for copies made solely for the purpose of printing output (ie, you can send them to a printer, or in the more complicated case to another computer that is acting as a print server, as long as they go away when the print job is done).

In a more similar vein to your 'PageFoo' example, Autodesk at one point had a viewer application for its various drawing formats so that you didn't need a $5000 seat just to print.

Re:the beast of the nature

[Phillup]

When I installed the Windows Vista Beta, there was a segment in the EULA expressly saying that you can't copy the fonts

Easy to figure out why...

Actually, only computer fonts have IP protection

[LionMage]

You can't trademark, patent, or copyright a traditional typeface -- at least, not in the United States. For those who don't know, a typeface or font used to be a collection of metal blocks with raised edges which, when used in a printing press, would impress the images of the corresponding characters onto a page.

There is absolutely zero protection for the distinctive look of a typeface, which is why you can go out and buy "look-alike" fonts and why you can even download clone fonts.

The intellectual property protection for computer fonts comes from the idea that fonts are computer programs -- because a computer font is a file consisting of a set of instructions that tell the computer how to render the characters that make up the font. So copyright applies.

However, there's nothing stopping you from printing out each of the characters at some large point size (say, so there's one character filling each page), painstakingly tracing those characters with graph paper, and creating your own knock-off font. In fact, this technique is used a lot. What you won't be able to do, unless you're a master craftsman or engineer, is determine and duplicate the hints that make a font legible at small point sizes.

Now, I can't speak for the IP laws in the UK, but it is at least true that in the U.S., only computer fonts enjoy legal protection, and only because they are considered software.