Re: ITP: ttf-japanese-kandata

[David Starner <dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org>]

On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 11:54:02PM -0700, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> Following may be useful as a reference point for the copyright law.
> 
> If I remember correctly, basic shape of glyph is not be copyrighted
> since it is common to all fonts and should be legible.  Also for dot
> matrix fonts, mere coincident does not make a violation of copyright due
> to limited possibility of choice.
> 
> Also note that, even with new copyright law, font itself is not covered
> by the copyright law in Japan.  (Software is covered.) Japan has not
> verified WIPO 1997 treaty on this typeface thing either.  (That is my
> web search result. IANAL.) 
> 
> I remember reading that ADOBE created postscript fonts in such a way
> that they can claim them as a "software" in which shape is programmed
> into a code.  (This is to make sure they keep their right under most
> legal system.)  So copyright of fonts are slightly different issue from
> ordinary software copyright in legal term.

What I've got of copyright law is that fonts (the actual shape) is not 
protectable by copyright, at least not in the US. BDF fonts probably
aren't protectable, because that's just description of the actual
shape. TrueType/Postscript/MetaFonts are, however, because the code
is creative expression and can be done several ways to get the same
result. We have fonts in Debian (roxen-fonts*) that are bitmap rips
of commerical/proprietary Adobe fonts that claim that Adobe feels it's
legal.

So apparently Japanese and US law agree on the general points. What's
the WIPO 1997 treaty, and who signed it? So far, our archive has main
(legal about anywhere) and non-US (can't be distributed from the US).
We'll have problems if this can't be distributed from, say, Germany -
whether or not it matters for this package, other fonts may have a
problem.

-- 
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
Pointless website: http://dvdeug.dhis.org
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