Jeff Tucker’s Speech on IP

It is always fun to hear Jeff’s spirited talks and this one is also quite entertaining.

Despite trying to catch all the anti-IP information I can, I’d never heard the tidbit about typefaces not being permitted copyright before (around the 45min mark). In looking up more about it, it appears that they do see themselves covered, not as a copyrighted design but as copyrighted computer software now (e.g., the data in the TrueType file is considered software). While I have no legal background whatsoever, the cases described don’t seem to support their own line of thinking (http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2006/01/legal_protectio.html and http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scrIpts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=UNESCO_Font_Lic).

In their description of Adobe v. SSI, they say the defendant had copied the files but SSI felt they were safe because they moved the typeface description points slightly to make them different. If the typeface file is a copyrighted arrangement of the design data (permitted copyright) used to create that typeface design (not permitted copyright), and assuming SSI modified the design data points, it couldn’t be the same “software”. Not that I am questioning whether a judge can rule incorrectly, nor have I read anything short of these descriptions of the case, but I don’t see how this case could have been won by Adobe unless there was evidence showing they didn’t actually modify the data used to generate the file and it turned out to be an exact copy of the software.