Re: the truth which dare not speak it's name

Christopher Slye wrote:

> On Jul 8, 2009, at 11:32 AM, Christopher Fynn wrote:

>> While this is a concern I'm not sure if it is a real issue. If someone
>> uses a font they have exclusive rights to on their website, and then
>> someone else copies and uses it on their own website, or in a
>> publication, couldn't the first party take legal action against the
>> second just like they could if somebody used their trademark?

> Yes... except in court they might be asked about whether it was obvious 
> to the person who took the font that it was not free to take. This where 
> the "protection" issue is important to foundries. People keep trying to 
> convince the foundries that "your font is not really protected because 
> people can just un-wrap it". But that is a substantial protection, 
> legally speaking. If someone gets on the witness stand and says, "The 
> font was on the web site, and most such fonts are free, so I just 
> assumed this one was," then maybe that's persuasive to a judge or jury. 
> But the case is much different if they have to say, "I found the font 
> file and unwrapped it and ignored the licensing information that I 
> deleted."

Although some have said "your font is not really protected because
people can just un-wrap it" I don't think anybody is expecting there to
be no support some "web font" format  - just that TTF/OTF font format
should be supported too for fonts with a permissive licence. Obviously
the company wanting to protect their bespoke font would use a wrapped
"web-font" version - and perhaps for good measure this would be based on
a cut-down version of the font with a basic character set, no alternates
and no OT features.

(A note right at the bottom of each page something like: "All material
used on this site including text, fonts and images is Copyright by
XXXXXX Corporation, All Rights Reserved" might be useful too.)

- CF
> -Christopher

Received on Thursday, 9 July 2009 00:25:57 UTC