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.

Comments

Schadenfreude much?

[sconeu]

"But our piracy is different! We're a big corporation, we're allowed to do this!!!"

Re:Schadenfreude much?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, since they have this one act of piracy.. we should just assume their whole business model is piracy based. We should seize their domain and prevent them from doing business in the future.. you know, just like the RIAA/MPAA wants to do to anyone else.

Re: Schadenfreude much?

[amxcoder]

Was going to say similar...

The font maker needs to use the same rules [as the media cartels] when figuring out infringement costs. The media companies love to use a "per infringement" claim. So each instance of each letter of the font that was used should be treated as a separate infringement, plus throw in some wild guest-imates of how many people purchased items containing the font, and how many eyeballs may have seen it in promotions and media since it's first illegal use...

If someone shares a music album online, the RIAA/MPAA don't go for just 1 instance of piracy for the whole album, they treat EACH song as it's own instance. Therefore, using this same reasoning, a font is a collection of multiple pictographs (like an album is comprised of songs), so logically it seems safe to assume that each letter in a font is treated like a song on an album would be treated. Just because the creator packaged a group of pictographs together into a single 'font' (similar to how songs are packaged into a single album) does not change anything. It also appears that more than one font typeface was pirated, so this adds even more penalties to the mix, as it is like songs from 2 albums were pirated.

Heck, going off the logic of another recent story, I'm sure this gives the NSA reason to start spying for years to come on the entire Universal media corporation like they have been with KDC over piracy!

Same rules to estimate damage?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Is he claiming each letter is one count of violation? Like RIAA typically does?

Re:Will be hard to prove

[sremick]

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. .

I know that RTFA isn't popular on /. but come on. It says right there that the designer did pay for a license for the font, but it wasn't one that permitted commercial usage.

Re:details

[BitterOak]

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.