Comment regarding "public domain"ness

[cnlohr]

I am not a lawyer, but, you may want to update your readme...

Contrary to many points of "research" you will find online (much of it lies peddled by foundries) in the US and most other countries (except Germany), rasterized typefaces are all public domain. (NOT FONTS, FONTS SCARY PROTECTED DANGER) Typefaces are safe.

USC 37 CFR § 202.1(e) is the US law makes it clear. No legal protection for typefaces. In the Wikipedia article on this topic's words: "Under U.S. law, typefaces and their letter forms or glyphs are considered utilitarian objects whose public utility outweighs any private interest in protecting their creative elements."

I so appreciate you collecting these rasterized typefaces, and hope you continue to do so, but urge you to tread very lightly when it comes to the dangerous landmine laden wasteland that is fonts)

You can try weighing through the FUD and poopstorm lies of "research" all the foundries hire people to crank out, but at the end of the day, the law is the law and they aren't getting any pity from me no matter how loud they cry.

[mirabilos]

Do you have a source for your “not in Germany” claim?

I researched this a decade or more ago, so I don’t have links handy, but TTBOMK bitmap fonts are not under copyright protection in Germany.

[cnlohr]

https://www.crowdspring.com/blog/font-law-licensing/

In contrast, Germany recognized in 1981 that typeface designs can be protected by copyright as original works. England also allows typeface designs to be protected by copyright (since 1989).

[mirabilos]

Hah, that’s not very much.

There’s substantiative evidence that this is untrue not only for bitmap fonts, but also for many vector fonts, and is especially untrue for the typeface (incidentally, a bitmap font is a graphical fixation of the typeface at one given size, not a font-in-the-sense-of-computer-instructions):

• https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=cef9bea0-db08-43c7-9973-7036c5af9852
• https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtsschutz_von_Schriftzeichen
• https://www.typolexikon.de/schriftlizenzen/

These references all hint at one possible exception for that though (in the sense that it’s not yet been sufficiently discussed, in contrast to “Brotschriften”), namely fancy/design types (“Zierschriften”). For “Brotschriften”, i.e. normal, legible, text (article headings and text body), the situation has been pretty clear:

| Traditionellerweise wird ein urheberrechtlicher Schutz für Schriftarten verneint. Im Kern wird dies damit begründet, dass die Erfordernisse an die Lesbarkeit und Gleichmässigkeit der Schriften zu wenig Gestaltungsfreiraum für individuelle Ausprägungen zuliessen. Der Gebrauchszweck sei weitgehend durch die vorgegebenen Buchstabenformen bedingt.

And, while the Wikipedia reference “BGH, Urteil vom 30. Mai 1958” indicates that Brotschriften can possibly be protected by copyright given (certain criteria), it does note that they denied them in practice in all cases they had to decide.

It does mention the “Gesetz zum Wiener Abkommen vom 12. Juni 1973 über den Schutz typographischer Schriftzeichen und ihre internationale Hinterlegung (Schriftzeichengesetz) vom 6. Juli 1981” which is probably the reference for your source. The law is comprised of basically just stating the Vienna Agreement for the protection of type faces and their international deposit is agreed to. Wikipedia says it’s not been enacted though as only Germany and France ratified it so far, apparently lacking quorum. The agreement does move the protection from trademark and business law into copyright law, but has requirements of newness and/or uniqueness, and requires registration. But given it’s not active yet… and it has anyway been replaced in 2004 by the Gemeinschaftsgeschmacksmuster which moves it back to trademark law; the linked law change paper explicitly makes it supercede the Schriftzeichengesetz.

| Im Ergebnis wurde bisher seit 1945 die urheberrechtliche Schutzfähigkeit von Werksatzschriften (Gebrauchsschriften, Brotschriften, Textschriften) weltweit (!) als »Werk der bildenden Künste« verneint, ihnen also der urheberrechtliche Schutz konsequent verweigert.

Apparently, Microsoft was annoyed because all they could get for their “Segoe UI” was trademark protection on the name. It was too close to a Frutiger typeface.

[cnlohr]

Wow! I had no idea and took the other articles at face value. I would definitely consider these bread writing and I would expect most would.

Thanks for finding this. I am really glad governments haven't been totally captured by corporate interests.