On Wednesday 24 October 2001 11:54, Markus Kuhn wrote: | On Tuesday 23 October 2001 21:57, Sergej Malinovski wrote: | > I was reading the free FontLab Manual the other day and it says that | > you can patent fonts. |
Markus, first of all, thanks a lot for clarification. | The verb "to patent" is a bit misleading here, because the underlying | legislation is not the "patent law", but the "designs law" of the | respective countries. | | You have to distinguish between | | - copyright | - registered trade mark | - registered design | - patent yes, these are different things | | which are different legal instruments with different rules and | application processes, though the last three are typically administered by | people working for the respective national patent office. | | http://www.patent.gov.uk/ | http://www.patent.gov.uk/design/definition.htm | Ok, let me explain what's the situation in Russia with those things. - patent Under patent, people understand here some "invention", like you made new material which is more light than allluminium and stronger than titanium - so, you may apply for this. Patents claimed in US/Europe, to my best knoledge, not valid here. This makes absolutely legal, for example, using Delta hint in TrueType Bytecode Interpreter ;-) - copyright under copyright people understand (again, here!) ownership for rights, usually for book, music, books'character, etc. So, books are copyrighted - but I don't know how fonts are treated. Anyway, even if copyright/patent for fonts (typefaces) exist, I am not aware about at lleast one case when there was law enforcement. While non-working law can't be treated as "non-existing", it's pretty much can be ignored now. | What is a Design? | | A registered design is a monopoly right for the outward appearance of | an article or a set of articles of manufacture. It can last for a maximum | of 25 years and is a property that, like any other business commodity, may | be bought, sold, hired or licensed. A registered design is additional to | any design right or copyright protection that may exist automatically in | the design. | this is usually called "patent" here | The application process is different, but the protection granted for a | design by registration can be similar to that granted for an invention in | a patent. Designs usually refer to type faces, not fonts, which is a more | abstract notion of the artistic work that went into the shape of the | glyph, and not just the technical details of the font format and hinting | information. | | The corresponding German legal term is "Geschmacksmuster", and more | information on this legal protection form is available on | ok, I guess, "design" is not copyrightable/patentable here. | http://www.dpma.de/formulare/gsm.html | http://www.dpma.de/formulare/r5704.1.pdf | | As the last URL says, type faces (fonts) can be protected for up | to 25 years in Germany as registered designs. The above URL also | list some relevant international treaties, such as the Vienna | Agreement of 1975-06-12 for the Protection of Type Faces and their | International Deposit. BTW: do you have, by chance, list of fonts/typeface for which patents ("designs") expired? I was looking for it some time ago, with no success (as I am far away from Germany) I guess these outlines can be taken, and hinted, and distributed in a *free* way. Of course, font names should be renamed, but it's an easytask :-) So, it will be good solution, at least for Latin-alphabet based languages and W.European people | | Markus -- Vadim Plessky http://kde2.newmail.ru (English) 33 Window Decorations and 6 Widget Styles for KDE http://kde2.newmail.ru/kde_themes.html KDE mini-Themes http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/ _______________________________________________ Fonts mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/fonts
