On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 12:41:13PM +0900, Kenshi Muto wrote: > > > Unless Japanese law is created in a much different manner than it is > > > in the rest of the world, the results of out-of-court settlements do > > > not constitute legal precedents; they may provide insight into the > > > legal counsel's assessment of their chances of winning a suit, but > > > there are other factors that contribute to such an assessment besides > > > the letter of the law -- most notably, the respective depths of the > > > parties' pockets. > > If the party who is using HITACHI font is commercial entity, they may > > likely to pay some money to avoid costly litigation if settlement > > includes no actual financial impact. It does not even say how much they > > gained. > > I do not think the Japanese law is created in a much different manner. > The phase of whether legal or illegal was really old issue. > LABO-123 32dot was fully-copied without license agreement from Hitachi. > Watanabe font/xfonts-intl-japanese-big(<1.2.1) is copied from LABO-123 > as is. > Kochi font was copied some part from Watanabe. > IMHO Japanese font stands very weak about legal basis, but LABO-123 > creates by license violation. What license does it violate? > Dead-copy should be removed also. Hitachi/Typebank continue to sell > original font. And they are welcome to continue selling the font to anyone who is willing to pay for it. However, I am always opposed to retroactively granting of intellectual property rights that did not exist at the time of a work's creation. If Hitachi had a reasonable belief based in existing Japanese case law that copyright protection would apply to the font, I'm at least inclined to be sympathetic to their plight; but I don't think this makes it an issue that needs to be corrected in a stable release. > And kochi font upstream author recommends to use new font strongly. > Do we ignore his intent also? > Goto-san has already uploaded newer packages to woody, but Martin's > list don't include them. But xfonts-intl-japanese-big is included. A package's maintainer is always free to request removal of their package from unstable, if they feel that Debian should no longer distribute it (for any reason). But for a stable release, even a change in the available font list could be a regression. We should have solid reasons for wanting such a removal. > > > I don't believe that Debian should ingratiate itself to corporations who > > > throw their weight around to carve out intellectual property without the > > > sanction of the courts. Unless and until Hitachi is taking legal action > > > against our distributors or users in Japan, I think Debian ought to > > > ignore these apparently baseless claims. > Steve, do you want to make distributors/users in Japan to teststone? > I don't agree this idea. > Debian Project has the responsibility about distribution. Do you believe that our distributors and users in Japan are truly in any danger from Hitachi over this issue? We distribute software that infringes potentially thousands of software patents, and apply the same policy: if there is no reason to believe the patent will be enforced in court, the patent should be treated as if it did not exist. And patents pose more of a danger to our users than this purported "font right" does, because it's use of patented ideas that infringes a patent holder's rights; I'm not sure what behaviors would be seen to infringe this hypothetical "font right". -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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