Re: Henle Music font

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Am 2014-09-07 um 03:44 schrieb Abraham Lee <address@hidden>:

> On Sat, Sep 6, 2014 at 12:57 PM, Nicolai Pfeffer <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Hi Abraham!
>> 
>> I’m a clarinetist and music editor from Cologne, Germany and I’ve worked as 
>> an engraver for some of the major German publishing houses. I highly 
>> appreciate your effort of creating a Henle-like music font for public use. 
>> Since I presume that their current fonts are all copyrighted it might be 
>> best to imitate the old font from the Würzburg Stürtz engraving company. 
> Thank you for the information! Yeah, I think we don't want to imitate the 
> current Henle font for the reasons you describe. Sounds like you have quite a 
> lot of experience with Henle. I look forward to your feedback in the future!

At least in most of Europe and the USA there’s no copyright on the look of 
fonts at all, just sometimes a trademark on the name. That’s why there exist so 
much clones under different names.

The rationale behind the „missing“ copyright is somewhat complicated (I 
previously explained it at least once on this list), but it goes like „if it 
would be a work of art, then you could not easily read it“ (so it might apply 
for extraordinary titling fonts).

The 1973 "Vienna Agreement for the Protection of Type Faces and their 
International Deposit“ should solve the legal problem but was never ratified.

On the other hand in the EU there is a 3-year-copyright on newly published 
fonts.

In the UK and some other legislations there exists a copyright on „sweat of the 
brow“, that is valid for fonts (but lasts only 25 years), plus a copyright on 
the design of books (typographical arrangement of published editions).

In Germany there’s also no copyright on the design of sheet music or notes (but 
of course on the edition of a piece), even if some publishers claim it.

German Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtsschutz_von_Schriftzeichen
English Wikipedia (not so extensive): 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces

IANAL

Greetlings, Hraban
---
fiëé visuëlle
Henning Hraban Ramm
http://www.fiee.net
http://angerweit.tikon.ch/lieder/
https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)