Typeface protection
Designers and other type users worry about what they can and can't do with type. Font producers worry about users stealing or innocently giving away the work that provides their (often meagre) living.
Agfa Monotype's Bill Davis (now with Ascender Corporation) looks at the options for font creators and sellers in licensing the uses of their typefaces in his presentation at the 2003 ATypI Vancouver conference.
Linotype's Thomas Caldwell summarises the copyright, design patent and trademark issues in a PDF presentation which he gave at TypoTechnica 2003.
Here Cynthia Hollandsworth (now Cynthia Batty and a past ATypI executive director) writes on "Licensing type: a chain of creative relationships", which summarises the legal relationships among creator, publisher and users of type. First published in the ATypI Newsletter in 1998.
Ian N Feinberg summarizes a 1998 US case that clarified copyright in font software programs.
The US-focused campaigning website TypeRight contains useful background and briefing material on typeface protection. The site was last updated in 1999, but the material is relevant today.
For readers of German, there is Valentin Blank's extensive 1999 paper Schriftschutz, available in PDF on his website at www.vblank.ch/recht/: consultants and advisors included Adrian Frutiger, Hans Ed. Meier, Max Caflisch, Dr iur Lucas David, Dr Volker Stueckradt and Erich Alb.