Re: Pseudo-handwritten font

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Am 2013-03-16 um 00:29 schrieb Martin Tarenskeen:

>> Am 2013-03-15 um 10:06 schrieb TaoCG:
>> 
>>> This is all very interesting, I'd love to have a jazz style font in 
>>> LilyPond,
>>> though I don't particularly like the Sigler Jazz font. I much prefer their
>>> Swing font.
>>> I was still wondering if there won't be any license issues if the font is
>>> redrawn manually since in the end everyone familiar with the Sigler fonts
>>> will recognize it as such or some might even say: "Hey look, they're using
>>> the same jazz font as Finale/Sibelius."
>> 
>> No, the look of a font isn’t copyrighted, but the name is sometimes a 
>> trademark - that’s why a lot of lookalikes exist whose names point to the 
>> original, like "Zurich" or "Swiss" for "Helvetica".
> 
> When you compare these fonts closely, you will see they are lookalikes, but 
> there are small differences.

Of course, since they are only lookalikes. But some even use (more or less) the 
same metrics, like URW Nimbus Sans and its derivates (e.g. TeX Gyre Heros). On 
the other hand Arial uses mostly the same metrics, but has visible differences.

> It's not only the name of the font that is copyrighted.

It is.
At least in Germany and Switzerland, but AFAIK in all European jurisdictions, 
fonts aren’t copyrightable, if you believe it or not. The "Vienna Agreement for 
the Protection of Type Faces and their International Deposit" was only ratified 
by Germany and France (maybe UK) and therefore isn’t active, since it has to be 
ratified by at least 5 underwriters.
In the USA and most other countries there are no correspondent laws.
The name of a font *may* be protected as a trademark (Helvetica is, Feta is 
not).
BUT in Europe a NEW font has an automatic patent protection of three years.

Quoted after http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtsschutz_von_Schriftzeichen 
(sorry, didn’t look after Dutch or English parallels).

> But just like with music-copyright it's not always easy to tell when a font 
> is "inspired by ..." or "stolen from ...".

That’s a different subject.


Greetlings, Hraban
---
fiëé visuëlle
Henning Hraban Ramm
http://www.fiee.net
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