Posts Tagged ‘copyright’

The Law on Fonts and Typefaces: Frequently Asked Questions

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

The right typeface is often the key to a great logo, graphic or web design. But there’s much confusion and misinformation about typefaces, fonts and the law.

Many people do not understand the law governing the use of typefaces and fonts. Others incorrectly assume that they can freely use any typeface or font for any project.

When you purchase a commercial font, you are purchasing a license to use the font software. Your rights and obligations are defined in the End User License Agreement (EULA). Those agreements will vary among fonts and among font makers – so read them very carefully to understand what you can and cannot do with the fonts you’re licensing. For example, some agreements will restrict the number of computers on which you can install a font.

How is a font different from a typeface?

Technically, a “font” is a computer file or program (when used digitally) that informs your printer or display how a letter or character is supposed to be shown. A “typeface” is a set of letters, numbers and other symbols whose forms are related by repeating certain design elements that are consistently applied (sometimes called glyphs), used to compose text or other combination of characters.

Although many people would call “Helvetica” a font, it’s actually a typeface. The software that tells your display or printer to show a letter in “Helvetica” is the font.

What is copyright?

Copyright is a form of legal protection provided to those who create original works. Under the 1976 Copyright Act (United States), the copyright owner has the exclusive right to reproduce, adapt, distribute, publicly perform and publicly display the work. Any or all of these rights can be licensed, sold or donated to another party. One does not need to register a work with the U.S. Copyright Office for it to be automatically protected by copyright law (registration does have benefits – but we won’t be covering those in this article). For more about copyright law, you can read Small Business Legal Issues: Copyright Basics.

Does copyright law protect typefaces and fonts?

Generally, copyright law in the U.S. does not protect typefaces. Fonts may be protected as long as the font qualifies as computer software or a program (and in fact, most fonts are programs or software). Bitmapped fonts are considered to be computerized representations of a typeface (and are not protected by copyright law). On the other hand, scalable fonts (because they are incorporated as part of a program or software) are protected by copyright.

This means that copyright law (at least in the U.S.) protects only the font software, not the artistic design of the typeface.

You should remember that copyright law, and more specifically, as it relates to typefaces and fonts, varies by country. For example, the U.S. may be the only country in the western world not to recognize intellectual property rights in typeface design. The U.S. Copyright Office has unequivocally determined that fonts are not subject to protection as artistic works under the 1976 Copyright Act.

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Posted in business, crowdsourcing, design, How To, start-up tips | 17 Comments »

Small Business Legal Issues: Copyright Basics

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Prior to crowdSPRING, I was a lawyer for 13 years – focusing on complex commercial and intellectual property litigation. This is the first in what will be a regular feature in our blog discussing important legal issues that impact every small business.

What is Copyright?

Copyright is a form of legal protection provided to those who create original works. Under the 1976 Copyright Act (United States), the copyright owner has the exclusive right to reproduce, adapt, distribute, publicly perform and publicly display the work. Any or all of these rights can be licensed, sold or donated to another party. One does not need to register a work with the U.S. Copyright Office for it to be automatically protected by copyright law (registration does have benefits – but we won’t be covering those in this article).

Copyright laws around the world can differ in significant ways. Most countries are signatories to various International treaties and agreements governing copyright protection (such as the Berne Copyright Convention). Under the Berne Copyright Convention, if your work is protected by copyright in your own country, then your work is protected by copyright in every other country that signed the Berne Copyright Convention.

What does Copyright protect?

Copyright protects works such as poetry, movies, writing, music, video games, videos, plays, paintings, sheet music, recorded music performances, novels, software code, sculptures, photographs, choreography, and architectural designs.

To be protected by copyright, a work must be “fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” This means that the work must exist in physical form for at least some period of time. A tangible medium includes paper (even a napkin will do!) and digital forms of storage. Additionally, the work must be original. It doesn’t matter if the work is similar to existing works, and copyright law is blind to whether the work is good or bad – so long as the work is original, it is protected by copyright. Finally, a work must be the result of at least some creative effort by the author.

Copyright doesn’t protect an idea, system or process (you would need to obtain patent protection for those). So, for example, if your small business is creating software programs, you would generally be unable to protect under copyright law the algorithms, methods, systems, ideas or functions of software (your code, however, is protected – nobody can sell or distribute your code without your permission).

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Posted in business, How To, start-up tips, Strategy | 8 Comments »

How Does crowdSPRING Protect Intellectual Property?

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

UPDATED: March 17, 2010.

crowdSPRING respects intellectual property – this is one of our core values as a company (before co-founding crowdSPRING, I spent 13 years as an attorney focusing on the protection of intellectual property, for clients around the world). People often ask what crowdSPRING does to protect intellectual property. The Q&A below shares our answers to the most common questions.

1. Does crowdSPRING have specific policies to protect people’s intellectual property rights?

Answer: Yes. crowdSPRING has two specific, written policies designed to protect intellectual property. First, crowdSPRING’s  Copyright Policy makes it easy for copyright owners to report alleged violations of their intellectual property rights. Second, crowdSPRING’s User Agreement prohibits people from selling, reproducing, modifying, displaying, preparing derivative works from, reposting, or using the content found on crowdspring.com – without the express written permission from the owner of the work.

2. What does crowdSPRING do to prevent people’s intellectual property from being stolen?

Answer: The International Chamber of Commerce estimates that the global fiscal loss due to theft of intellectual property is over $600 billion USD per year. Stealing someone else’s intellectual property is a crime in just about every single country on Earth.  However, it is impossible to prevent people from stealing intellectual property (whether the theft occurs online or offline).

Just because it is generally impossible to prevent theft doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t make reasonable efforts to protect intellectual property. Here’s what we do at crowdSPRING:

  • We’ve developed and published detailed, comprehensive written policies concerning intellectual property (as you saw in the answer to question 1 above).
  • We’ve adopted strict policies and practices governing IP disclosures.
  • We’ve developed and published detailed, comprehensive written standards of conduct for creatives (see Q&A 4 below).
  • We’ve developed rules and procedures recognizing the importance of original ideas in projects so as to protect original ideas and prevent concept copying (see Q&A 14 below).
  • We make it very easy to report possible violations of intellectual property (see Q&A 5 below).
  • We work together with our entire community – nearly 55,000 designers strong across the world (our designers come from over 170 countries) to identify possible violations of intellectual property.
  • When a creative withdraws their entry, it is screened completely so that no part of it is shown. The word “withdrawn” is instead shown to buyers and other users.
  • We permanently bar people from crowdspring.com for violating others’ intellectual property rights (see Q&A 7-10 below).
  • We enforce the licensing restrictions of third parties (see for example, Q&A 13 which deals with stock images).
  • After a project is completed, we screen with a gray filter all except the winning entries for that project to make it very difficult to review any details associated with non-winning designs.

We have a number of other systems in place that we keep confidential, that help us to protect our community from the theft of intellectual property, and we continue to look for other technological and non-technological ways we can improve our efforts in this area. If you have suggestions, we’d love to hear in the comments to this post.

3. How does crowdSPRING inform its community about crowdSPRING’s intellectual property policies?

Answer: Every time a creative submits a design to a project, they are required to pick one of three statements about their design:

  • I created everything in my entry and I didn’t copy anyone else’s concept.
  • This design includes photos, illustrations or fonts created by others but I have the right to both use and resell.
  • This design includes photos, illustrations or fonts created by others and if the buyer picks it, they’ll have to buy the rights.

A creative cannot participate in a project unless they select one of those three statements. We also publish links to our policies on the participation pages, and in a creative tip’s page visible to everyone in every project.

In logo design projects, we specifically require that designers represent that their logos do not contain any form of stock art. You can read more about our strict stock art policy.

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Posted in business, community, crowdsourcing, design, Strategy | 22 Comments »

Inspiration and imitation

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

In our continuing discussion of copyright, imitation and inspiration, I’ve decided to throw in my two cents. Hi, I’m Chris, one of the developers here at crowdSPRING. While I may spend most of my days making and breaking portions of our site, I did manage (and still try) to dedicate a small portion of my time to photography, among other things.

Back in my school days, the first images that really struck me were those of Ansel Adams. Perhaps because of my time spent camping and wandering the wilderness, his ability to capture the shear splendor of nature is, well… impressive. And to think he did it with early 1900′s view cameras and photographic plates, not to mention hiking through the wilderness, lugging that equipment. It’s simply inspiring. I know his work had an influence on me. While I never deliberately tried to imitate it, I definitely kept it in mind.

Earlier this week, Angeline and I were discussing our appreciation for photo artists who do their work in the lens – the ability to get the framing, exposure, composition, and expression of their scene or subject without any further tweaking or treatment in the darkroom or editing software. In his early work, Adams had no choice in this matter. It was all or nothing.

Wired recently ran a bit about another photographer, Mike Stimpson, who recreates famous photographs with Legos. Much of these prints had little or no post-exposure treatment. What’s really fascinating is how his use of everyday materials, when photographed in close proximity, loose their everyday appearance and become part of the scene. Also, the ability to work in small scale and get realistic, large scale results is no small feat.

The question here is, of course, is he creating original works of art, or is he just imitating? There’s no question he is drawing inspiration for his subjects from other artists’ work. It’s the execution that’s the difference. By virtue of the materials, size, equipment and budget, he cannot copy these famous works exactly. But that may well be part of the motivation. The lego figures add a sense of humor and, more importantly, artistic distance from their inspiration.

So where is the line? I’m not sure anyone can really say. Take Andy Warhol‘s Campbell Soup Cans (1962).

Andy Warhol, \

There is no doubt he intended to imitate the popular culinary icon, but that was part of his motivation. He repurposed everyday, cultural iconography and presented it as art and as a commentary on life, which, as some would argue, is the real function of art.

A similar and more recent example is the blog Garfield Minus Garfield in which blogger slash artist Dan Walsh scans single strips of Garfield comics and painstakingly removes the title character. What’s left is a rather depressing picture of a man, Jon Arbuckle, in somewhat darkly humorous and unsettling conversations with himself. At first reading you would assume that Jim Davis would be up in arms about this, but he and his publisher have actually approved and are planning on printing a book of the altered strips. Davis is even a fan of the blog.

Personally, I think the line can be drawn when art is imitated for commercial profit. Take Nike‘s campaign for the 2005 Major Threat skateboarding tour. Whether or not any licensing or money has changed hands, they explicitly copied the cover of Minor Threat‘s first EP, changing very little, to promote what is essentially a product marketing tour.

This particular album cover is fairly well known and has been imitated before (see Rancid’s 1995 release, …And Out Come the Wolves), but primarily out of tribute or respect. The error on Nike’s part was not obtaining permission to copy the artwork beforehand. Minor Threat frontman Ian MacKaye was admittedly perturbed and Nike issued a formal apology after the fact and promised to dispose of any version of the piece. Does this make it right?

Photographers definitely straddle this line. They take photos of real life. Whether staged or spontaneous, their subjects exist before and after the shutter falls. I like to think a photograph becomes art in how it’s viewed. The framing, perspective, exposure and composition come together at that moment, through the photographer’s eye, to create something unique. So does the line get crossed when the motivation behind art changes? Do those who imitate out of respect and adoration, or out of a need to express something about society break the rules? Or is it those who copy to help market their new product or campaign?

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Posted in Awesomeness, business, community, design, inspiration | 2 Comments »

Concept Copying – A Primer (Part 2 of 3)

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

In part 1 of our discussion about concept copying, we defined concept copying, and illustrated an example, from an Apple patent application.

Concept copying is a very important subject in the design community – both for professionals and non-professionals. After all, while it’s commonly accepted that all design is inspired by other design, mere copying is NOT inspiration. But it also should be said that not everything we create is unique. We are influenced by our culture, our history, and our environment. But there is a very clear difference between inspiration and influence, and outright stealing.

Let’s continue our discussion by looking at an example – the logo design for askville, a question and answer service from Amazon that was launched to compete with, among others, Google Answers.

Long before Amazon published the above design, another company, eventful (an events website), had already been publicly using, for some time, the following logotype:

Did the designer who created the askville logotype simply copy the eventful logotype? After all, both use arial rounded fonts, both use lowercase type, both use two identical colors, and both switch colors for each morpheme. [NOTE: the original logo for askville had the term "ask" in blue and "ville" in green].

There are differences – the eventful logotype uses more compact letter spacing and a brighter blue, as well as a darker green color. There is also Amazon’s branding on the askville logotype. Are those differences meaningful?

Could we agree on ANY of the following?

  • that the eventful logotype is the first ever to have each morpheme be a separate color
  • that the eventful logotype uses an original font.
  • that the eventful logotype is the first ever to use all lowercase type
  • that the eventful logotype is the first ever to use green and blue colors
  • that the eventful logotype is the first ever to switch colors for each morpheme

I believe that two people couldn’t agree on any of those things, because the eventful logo was NOT the first design ever to have those elements. And it’s perfectly plausible (but not very likely) that the designer of the askville logo had never seen the eventful logo.

What do you think? Is this a clear example of concept copying? Or does this example underscore the real complexity of concept copying?

More on this issue, and some suggestions, in part 3 (early next week).

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Posted in business, community, crowdsourcing, design, How To, start-up tips | 5 Comments »