[Plib-devel] Re: legal matters

[Melchior F. <mf...@us...>]

* Steve Baker -- Saturday 09 July 2005 04:52:
> There is no explicit protection for fonts or typeface designs in US or European
> copyright laws.  Some people have patented their fonts - others have tried to use
> trademark law - but copyrights do not apply.

Right. There's no copyright for font/glyph *design*. I think I could take a 
font that I like and make a similar/equal one. Emphasize on *make*. For taking
a font (which, as file, *is* AFAIK copyright protected, just not as design),
and converting it (into a form that is still a font), I need the permission of
the owner. Which we certainly have, given that these fonts are free (part of
XFree :-).

But the situation really is:

    Helvetica . . . . . . . . . . . > fntBitmapFont.cxx/plib
    (c) Adobe                         Helvetica parts: (c) PWO? really?
        |                                       ^
        |________________genfonts_______________|
                         (c) PWO

And here I just don't see how the original Helvetica font can suddenly be
(c) PWO. Imagine the same process with an "electronic book", and running
pdftotext on it. It lost formatting (and write protection ;-), and all
link/hyperref capabilities, but in essence it's still the original work.
Now, would the book suddenly become copyright of "Glyph & Cog" (the
copyright holder of pdftotext)? Probably not. Even if pdftotext would
write a message into the output file claiming so. But who cares ...

m.


PS: I apologize to all for my impolite replies, especially to Andy. I took
    the first sign of a counter argument and only replied to that, while
    ignoring the rest. Bad style! And I just wanted to annoy Hornets, not
    getting stung.  :-)