Re: Arabic support in RedHat 9

On Mon, Apr 07, 2003 at 12:38:48PM -0700, jdow wrote:
> My understanding regarding fonts is that a font face cannot be
> copyrighted but the name can be. So it is hard to imagine what
> might have been the copyright issue here.

I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.  If you have questions on
copyright, trademark, or other protection of font faces, consult a
lawyer.

This is not the case that font names are protected by copyright.  Font
names are protected by Trademark law, not copyright law.  For example,
"Times Roman" is a trademark of Linotype.  I can't call a font by that
name unless it is provided by Linotype.

US Copyright does not CURRENTLY extend to font DESIGN (whereas there
are other countries in the world where font design is protected by
copyright or similar laws).  In other words, there are some that will
take a font designed by a third party, scan it in, convert it to
vectors, do some minimal hinting, and sell it under a different name.
These are cheap knock-off fonts that don't look very good on screen,
have poor spacing of glyphs, or varying weights of font elements.  In
my opinion this practice is deplorable as it takes years of experience
to design a good font, which can be a true work of art which should be
protected.

In my opinion, the font designer (or company that employs such a
designer) should have the right to protect their work from this kind
of plagiarism.  But this doesn't reduce the need for high quality
fonts that are readily available and standardized across all
platforms, including operating systems, application software,
printers, press, etc.  This is a very big issue.

Even though the font design is not protected, you can not take an
implementation of a font face provided by a third party, change the
name inside them (to avoid trademark violations), and redistribute
them.  Font implementations, as data, are covered by the same
copyright protection that protect software and other works (at this
level).

There are also other protections that font designers can use,
including design patents.  This isn't use much.

When incorporating new fonts in the distribution, we have to be
cautious of the source.  If there's ANY question that the font in
whole or in part is copied from a commercially distributed, licensed
font, we cannot include it.

Cheers,

Matt
[email protected]
--
Matt Wilson
Manager, Base Operating Systems
Red Hat, Inc.



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