Article Abstract:
Typeface and font creations require artistic and technical skills that go unrecognized in the legal and art worlds, leading to copyright infringement and unauthorized duplication of software. Designers need to know how to protect their font designs using trademarks for names of fonts and copyrighting the font software. The law offers copyright protection to individuals for the span of a lifetime plus fifty years; for corporations the time frame is a flat 75 years. In order to prove a legal infringement, typeface designers need to show that a copy of the font disk, not a re-digitized typeface, occurred. Trademarks for font names can help protect intellectual property, but the trademark symbols must remain on the product for a substantial case to be argued. Patents expire after 14 years, allowing the general public access to ideas that spent some time generating compensatory income for the designers.
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Article Abstract:
Fonts are now available from vendors on CD-ROM disks that contain libraries of hundreds of fonts. Another trend is to sell fonts in smaller units, as only one part of a whole family of fonts, for less than $100 in some cases. Apple's System 7.0 uses the TrueType font format and also supports the Adobe PostScript and font format. Font libraries, non-Roman fonts, font editing software, font special effects, and font management software are listed for the Apple Macintosh, IBM PC and compatibles, and for Unix machines. Information includes vendor name, address, phone number, product name and list price for each product.
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Article Abstract:
Bitstream of Cambridge, MA, releases The Fontware Library and Fontware. The Fontware Library contains 80 typefaces in 20 $195 font packages. The Fontware program creates bit-mapped characters for printing or screen display. Adobe Systems of Mountain View, CA, plans release of PC versions of the fonts in its Adobe Type Library this fall. The library includes 128 PostScript outline fonts already available for the Macintosh.
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