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Font Maker Sues Universal Music Over 'Pirated' The Vamps Logo (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Universal Music Group is being sued by HypeForType, which accuses the record label of using "pirated" copies of its fonts for the logo of The Vamps. The font is widely used for artwork, promotion material and merchandising of the popular British band, and the font creator is looking for a minimum of $1.25 million in damages. The font maker has filed a lawsuit accusing the major label of using its "Nanami Rounded" and "Ebisu Bold" fonts without permission. According to a complaint, filed in a New York federal court, Universal failed to obtain a proper license for its use, so they are essentially using pirated fonts.
"But our piracy is different! We're a big corporation, we're allowed to do this!!!"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
What crazy-ass font license does not allow derivative works? I can understand if it's a web font or PDFs or something where you are distributing copies of the font itself - but t-shirts, logos, and images? That's ridiculous.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Is he claiming each letter is one count of violation? Like RIAA typically does?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Since font shapes cannot be copyrighted, they will have a tough time proving that their own ttf file (which can be copyrighted) was used unlawfully. If universal claimed the font was not the font maker's font, I suppose they could demand to see the ttf file, and probably a judge would go along with it. And who's to say that universal couldn't have asked a third party to make the logo who had access to the font ttf file.
What crazy-ass font license does not allow derivative works?
I do some work that uses images in publications, not so much with fonts, but I expect that the license options are similar. Depending on the supplier, there can be all sorts of options. Internal use only. Public, but print-only, no Internet (then: how big is your print run?). Internet use, for a limited time. Internet use forever.
The most expensive license option is usually the one that covers products destined for resale. If it's not just a marketing expense, but something you intend to make a profit on, they want more money.
tl;dr: You absolutely must know how you intend to use something, so that you buy the appropriate license.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I thought this was settled in U.S. copyright law. You can't copyright a font, only the computer instructions for making the font. Therefore, you can't restrict how text set in the font is distributed, only the usage of the font files by the designers.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Then maybe we should just drop the whole "intellectual property" facade and let everyone copy everything perfectly legally?
If you think it's too onerous to follow the rules that you spent millions of dollars lobbying for, then I don't think you'll find much sympathy.
Still is no different than RIAA/MPAA suing for $150,000 for each MP3 which would cost $0.99 to purchase.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
If a punishment is not significantly worse than doing the right thing, it's pointless.
but I expect that the license options are similar.
Fonts are not, in of themselves, copyrightable. Only computer fonts can by protected with copyright, and that's only because technically they sort-of behave like code.
So it's not really like images, but computer code. While it is very common for computer code to have separate commercial and private licenses, I would think that this would not be common for fonts. Fonts can be freely cloned, so you would expect the market to toss out the nasty licenses. I mean, if I want a completely free license to a font I can't imagine it would cost more than a few hundred dollars on a freelance site to get a decent clone. That's why I was surprised.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This seems to me like a compelling argument for never licensing a commercial font, and just using the large and growing pool of free fonts.
Much as my personal policy for software is that if there is FOSS that can solve my problem, I try to use that even if there is something better that costs money. I don't even want to have to keep track of how many copies I have installed, how many backups I have made, etc.
That "Vamps" logo is pretty straightforward, and I'll bet it wouldn't be that hard to find some free font that would look about as nice.
Another good option: pay a free-lance artist (or even an art-college student) to design the logo, with a clear contract saying there will be no royalties.
As others have noted, the music labels are in the business of charging royalties and it's stupid for one to step on a licensing landmine like this.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Ok so I looked it up and yes fonts are not copyrightable in the US which is different from how it works over here in Europe.
It is a font, of course it can be justified. It could also be aligned left, center or right.
Fonts, scents, colors, the rules to games, there's a whole list of stuff you can't copyright. The rules were probably laid down during the "British copyright don't apply in America" stage, early on, to screw over particular English vendors.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.