Re: Copyright grants for fonts?
On Jun 27, 2006, at 19:14, Robinson Tryon wrote:
Does anyone know where I could find the explicit license from
Adobe/Digital for these fonts?
IANAL, but:
I believe that as far as bitmaps go, Adobe believes it has no case
against the 1988 U.S. Copyright Office opinion[1] that held that
images of glyphs are not copyrightable. Adobe asserts that Type 1
fonts and OpenType fonts are "font programs" (i.e. more than mere
graphics), but apparently even they don't believe that legacy screen
bitmap fonts are "font programs". In the old days, when printer Type
1 outlines and screen bitmaps were separate, Adobe made it a policy
that the bitmaps can be distributed free of charge.[2]
I guess that under the stated Adobe policy the legacy bitmap fonts
are only free as in beer, but if you trust that they aren't
copyrightable in the United States at all, then they are free as in
speech at least in the United States.
[1] http://ssifonts.com/myths2.HTM
[2] http://store.adobe.com/type/topics/licenseqa.html#q5
--
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
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