NBC sued for $2M? Fontastic.
p2pnet news view | Advertising:- NBC has been sued by typographic design firm Font Bureau for allegedly infringing its fonts in marketing material used to promote NBC shows.
So says the Wall Street Journal.
“NBC Universal is one of the more hard core supporters of stronger copyright law, with regular statements from execs that border on ridiculous,” says TechDirt, citing general counsel Rick Cotton (right) as an example.
Rick Cotton? Not Rick Cotton, promoter of Peer Impact and the man carefully selected by the major studios to lead the Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy’s Campaign to Protect America?
Or the Rick Cotton who once said, “In the absence of movie piracy, video retailers would sell and rent more titles. Movie theatres would sell more tickets and popcorn. Corn growers would earn greater profits and buy more farm equipment” – ?
Yup. That Rick Cotton.
“However,” says TechDirt, referring to the font-based lawsuit, “apparently even the ‘copyright maximalist’ lawyers and lobbyists over at NBC Unversal slip up once in a while,” going on:
“Of course, I think it’s ridiculous that any font company thinks it’s owed $2 million for such things (yes, font developers, I know you have strong feelings on this, but we’ve discussed them in the past). For all I care, NBC Universal should be able to do whatever it wants with the fonts it has. But, for a company that seems to tilt so far towards the copyright maximalist position, it seems worth noting when it faces a lawsuit for violating copyrights.
“Now, in an ideal world, it would be a teachable moment, where those lobbyists and lawyers might finally realize that in a modern digital world, perhaps copyright maximalism doesn’t make much sense (as if it ever did)… but that seems unlikely.”
(Cheers, RW)
Wall Street Journal – NBC Hit With Font Infringement Suit (Of All Things), October 9, 2009
TechDirt – NBC Sued For Over $2 Million… For Infringing On A Font, October 12, 2009
Peer Impact – The NEW Peer Impact, August 16, 2005
carefully selected – Corporate Power vs People Power, June 16, 2007
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October 15th, 2009 at 9:16 am
So what font was it?
October 15th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Antenna, Interstate, and Bureau Grotesque.
From here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/font-bureau-clashes-with-nbc-over-font-licensing.ars
And it’s fontastic indeed.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:34 am
From what I can gather, if the TechDirt comments are to be believed, you can’t copyright a typeface (fancy word for font) in the US. You can however copyright the file the font is in. So to avoid lawsuits in the future, simply export all the fonts characters and create your own file from them. Or simply use one of the millions of freebie fonts out there instead of wasting good money on something so trivial. Waste not want not, right? Then you can pass the savings on to you customers (pfft, like that would ever happen).
October 15th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
The problem for them is that since they are copyright extremist it is easy to sue them for copyright infringement and use their own argument in court.
October 15th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
fonts should be free and developed by a not for profit agency funded by companies such as Corel and MS for use in their publication and document software.
October 15th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
“From what I can gather, … you can’t copyright a typeface … in the US.”
Just the opposite.
And the font foundries are right at the top of the “Chronic Litigators” list.
As a digital designer, this issue was a given and frequent nuisance.
The foundries’ copyrights basically all say that all of their fonts (the vast majority that exist) need to not only be licensed on the machine that creates with them, but also on every machine that plays them out!
Example:
I created an event poster that was to be printed by a 3rd party. The same artwork with similar text was to also be used on special stationery and an e-mail campaign informing company participants of the event. According to the font foundries’ copyrights, the following applies. This is not to say I agreed with it, or even thought any of it was even enforceable or realistic. (Whether I followed any of it, or not, I’ll leave it up to you.)…
1) In order to create the poster, I naturally had to have the licenses on any “commerical” fonts used on my machine.
2) In order to proof the artwork to the clients, I needed to send everyone involved in that process a sample (usually a PDF). If I was to embed the fonts (to eliminate the problem of any missing fonts on the clients’ machines), each client would need a license. If I supplied the fonts themselves (to be installed by the clients) to those who didn’t have the licenses to use them, I would need a distribution license for each font involved.
3) When sending to the printer, it was supposedly an industry standard to bundle the fonts and source pictures with the work (and I won’t get into the problem of pictures here!). But every machine at the printer’s (such as the processing computer and the RIP device that separates the art into colour passes or plates) would need a license for every font involved.
4) The same problem existed with the e-mail campaign. If you attach any information documents about the event (which would normally match the design aesthetics of the work), again, every machine that plays it out would need licenses for each font. Similarly, if any materials were to be included that they would be expected to have printed and distributed to THEIR clients, any printer they took the file to would need the font licenses.
5) The stationery part of the project, of course, contained the same obstacles with the proofing and the printer.
Another angle of many font foundries’ copyrights you may not be aware of:
Some licenses only cover “using the font”. If you intend to make any money with their creation, some of these fonts apparently require a “commercial” license. Not every one of them, but some. “Which ones?”, you ask… Dunno, gotta read each license!
In other words, if the final product is being sold for profit, there are a certain number of fonts that would be looking for a “cut”, according to their licenses. (Yeah?! Rrrriiiiiggghhhhht!)
Most of my work was in the print industry, so lots of stuff I did ended up proofed by, and distributed to a lot of people in a lot of companies. Half of it was for profit. I’ve had to deal with lots of nasty letters, e-mails and phonecalls from font foundries, accusing me of breaching license terms and/or threatening to sue over it. One such “foundry” was some “elite” private practioner.
On any of these occasions, I would grill them on how, exactly they would be able to…
- track licensed/unlicensed usage of these fonts.
- determine if a creation was played out with the font itself, or rendered as a vector drawing or bitmap.
- ultimately determine actual breaches by all.
They couldn’t.
But, it didn’t stop them from threating everyone in the creation industries. And, they did seem to keep themselves “busy” filing legal suits, when binary newsgroups (such alt.binaries.fonts) were popular and sharing their fonts.
Sound like a familiar scenario?
As far as I know, font foundries are still “right up there” along with the music industry, stalking file sharers and threatening/filing lawsuits.
October 15th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
really? how could these font foundries have any financial backing ? last I checked their were hundreds of thousands of free open source and or CC fonts! No wonder they went for 2 million. That’s probably enough to cover them for the next 5 decades or until their ‘copyright’ becomes public domain. Or maybe they were going for the anti-p2p common goal of attempting to deter any further infringement by the individual and the curious public.
Either way copyright maximalists take note… this is what will be day to day if not hourly occurrence in your ideal utopia.
October 16th, 2009 at 12:41 am
1) “…how could these font foundries have any financial backing?”
A lot of them are not as “small” as you think they are.
As well, quite a number of them are either part of, or in bed with, the large software companies.
And, most of them cooperate with each other and funnel the distribution rights through a limited set of distributors.
(Geez, this IS starting to sound familiar!)
Case in point:
Agfa + Linotype + Adobe + Fonts.com
They even have a “trade organization” fronting for them now known as ATypI.
(RIAA equivalent for fonts?!)
2) “…hundreds of thousands of free open source and or CC fonts…”
Because many font foundries are in bed with the major software companies, their fonts are naturally bundled with all of the applications sold to those who create. (A chosen number of these fonts are also key to the software code as well.)
And, because they get their fonts out to you before you’ve even used the applications, they become popular by default. Yes, everyone can still load their own fonts from alternate sources. But, because everyone you’re collaborating with needs to share the same fonts, this becomes problematic, unless everyone talks to everyone and agrees to download and install the same lists from the same sources. This type of teamwork rarely happens, and the creative needs in every project is generally unique.
There are problems with some free fonts:
- They often don’t contain complete character sets, to accommodate all the desired text in some projects.
- They often don’t have enough “family variations” (bold/italic/etc).
- They’re often badly designed for the purpose, or won’t rip seemlessly to a printed product (you’d be surprised how many expensive snags this amounts to).
- They often have duplicate names with other free fonts that are unrelated to them, as they come from countless sources.
- With everyone downloading their own personal choices, this causes printers to have to either chase their customers for the missing fonts, and have insane amounts of fonts installed in their computers and have to manage that constantly.
- Many free fonts have been corrupted by being converted from one format to another (Type1 to TTF, Mac to PC, etc.). This goes for pirated versions of the commercial fonts as well.
When the core of your business is the usage of fonts, you tend to try and eliminate as many of these problems as you can. The best way is to stick to “proven” typefaces when you haven’t got the time for such problems. The one thing these foundries do well is design sound typefaces. And, because they collude with the program developers, the compatibility between the applications and their fonts is naturally “built-in”.
October 16th, 2009 at 9:49 am
This is a ridiculous lawsuit. Some comments and questions:
- The fonts in question have no originality. They are very common fonts, in use sicne who knows when, desgned by who knows whom.
- Then the fonts in my handwriting are copyright protected?
- When custom fonts are used, how does the world know that they copyrights are claimed?
- This is the problem with a half baked copyright law that no one has read or analyzed critically.
- The lawsuit is a scam, so a to settle for something.
October 16th, 2009 at 9:58 am
This is a harrasment lawsuit. Some comments and questions:
- The fonts in question have no originality. They are very common fonts, in use since who knows when, designed by who knows whom.
- Then the fonts in my handwriting are copyright protected?
- When custom fonts are used, how does the world know that they copyrights are claimed?
- This is the problem with a half baked copyright law that no one has read or analyzed critically.
- The lawsuit is a harassment, so a to settle for something. Learned from RIAA. RIAA learned if from their jackass lawyers.
- How do I know if the fonts P2PNet using right now belong to someone else and I am commuting contributory copyright infringement?
- How were damages calculated?
- Only a jackass lawyer would dare calculated or present the damages calculation.
- In the American legal system: You harass, you make settlement money.
October 18th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
@Thinker:
Before I address any of this, you need to know the difference between the terms “font” and “typeface”.
- A “typeface” is what a set of “glyphs” (characters) is designed to look like, based on each glyph being reproduced mechanically (punch cutting, lino-typing, typewriting, etc.).
- A “font” is the digital character set of a typeface, used to render the typeface in the digital world ( via computer, printer, etc.).
________________________________
1) “The fonts in question …are very common fonts, in use since who knows when, designed by who knows…”
Many fonts are based on typefaces that were designed years ago.
Example: “Garamond” was designed by Claude Garamond, somewhere around the 1500s.
When these typefaces became digitized, a new “product” was created – “fonts” – by a small starting number of “foundries”, who filed copyrights for them (as with any “new software”, which fonts were classified under), and “licensed distributors” for these fonts naturally emerged. In my current example, “Garamond” was probably “owned” by a German foundry when it was a mechanical typeface, and later also “owned” by Adobe, but also distributed by various foundries like ITC, and Monotype.
The “multiple owner” thing was a rediculous scenario that came with the territory, as lots of typefaces were released in digital format (fonts) by multiple foundries, all claiming to have created a “unique” product in their efforts.
________________________________
2) “Then the fonts in my handwriting are copyright protected?”
If you refer to the definitions I’ve given you, your handwriting as it stands is simply not a “font”.
It could only be a “font” if someone created the digital outlines of it and formed the applicable character set from that. So, given that scenario, if the creator of this font file wanted, yes! a copyright could be filed for it.
________________________________
3) “When custom fonts are used, how does the world know that they copyrights are claimed?”
All font licenses are *referred to* when you open them directly (double-click the font file itself).
If knowing the details of the license are needed, you look it up.
________________________________
4) “This is the problem with a half baked copyright law that no one has read or analyzed critically.”
Agreed!
And, I would add that not only are most copyright laws practically invisible to the users, but they’re also very obscure when you see them, and for the most part, unenforceable.
________________________________
5) “The lawsuit is a harassment, so a to settle for something. Learned from RIAA. RIAA learned if from their jackass lawyers.”
These suits are definitely what I would call “grasping at straws”, but believe it or not, the foundries didn’t take any cue from the MAFIAA we’re more familiar with. They’ve been doing this before music even went digital.
________________________________
6) “How do I know if the fonts P2PNet using right now belong to someone else and I am commuting contributory copyright infringement?”
You don’t have to know, as the website is employing the fonts. You’re only viewing the ones that your computer is displaying, and any “special” fonts required (ones that aren’t aren’t already licensed by all the softwares involved) would be either embedded to the page by the website, or be substituted for something else you computer has, by your browser.
________________________________
7) “How were damages calculated?”
Now THERE’S a question everyone should completely FRAME! (I said “frame”, not “flame”!)
I have asked this same question over and over, and have never seen an answer that even remotely addresses it.
My “take” on it would be this:
These cases are about a CIVIL infraction – copyright infringement.
As we’ve seen in the RIAA lawsuits, the civil courts never seem to demand that “actual damages” are ever determined. Instead, the plaintiffs are apparently allowed to “put a price” on the act of infringement itself, and that amount is reviewed if they actually win. (I can’t even guess what is involved in the “review”.)
I remember reading some years back about a few cases where foundries actually were awarded a 6- or 7-figure amount.
________________________________
Agreed.
That’s why they don’t.
They don’t have to, as I hypothesized in #7.
________________________________
9) “In the American legal system: You harass, you make settlement money.”
This one would probably not get an argument from anyone.
You can substitute “Canadian” for “American”, and you still wouldn’t.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
The copyright of everything that used the font should be given to that company, just to give NBC a lesson.