Dear Unicoders, hallo Barbara I finally solved the mystery of the circled S which has found its way to the AMS math fonts. It is indentified as a letterlike symbol still missing from UNicode:
GESCHUETZTE SORTE looks like: S in a circle meaning: A protected crop variety (there is a special protection of crop varieties in germany and now also in EU. In german it is called Sortenschutz and the registration agency is the Bundessortenamt) usage: current, in mail order garden catalogues. It is often used together with the registered sign. In the following links you can see it: http://www.uni-mainz.de/~knappen/asi_p58.jpg (from the catalogue of Ahrens + Sieberz, Spring 2004, page 58) http://www.uni-mainz.de/~knappen/gp_p159.jpg http://www.uni-mainz.de/~knappen/gp_p159a.jpg (from the catalogue of Gaertner Poetschke, Wundervolle Gartenwelt, Autumn 2003) The latter example shows a variety which is both GESCHUETZE SORTE and REGISTERED. For the design, I suggest to use a non-superscript version, following the design of the registered sign. How it came to be included in the AMS fonts is still a mystery, since no mathematical use of it is known to me. Yours, J"org Knappen
