Converting fonts - EULA KRAZY!

[HVB]

@Ryan - Do some research - look up Linotype lawsuits. The answer to your 'why hasn't Linotype sued ..." is that they have. Tried, anyway.

[Nick Shinn]

If you want examples of some really screwy patents, look at those involving user interfaces on mobile devices.
These are for things that those involved in web site development would consider a graphic design page layout made interactive with html. However, transfer it to an OEM device et voilà…

[John Hudson]

Hrant, the bar for registration of new designs is deliberately fairly low, i.e. a design does not need to be unique, novel or groundbreaking in order to qualify. Remember, what a design patent protects is the exploitable value of a particular work, and the fact that there are people who want to use Adobe Garamond in preference to Stempel Garamond (or Simoncini Garamond or Sabon or, for that matter, Adobe's Garamond Premier Pro) means that it has particular exploitable value and, hence, warrants the particular kind of limited protection offered by design patent. Doesn't that make sense to you? If a design is distinctive enough to be individually valued and desirable, then there is something in it that warrants protection.

The process of registering a design patent requires identification of 'prior art', i.e. existing works either explicitly referenced in the filed design or influencing it in some way. So I'm pretty sure that when Adobe registered Adobe Garamond they identified, as a minimum, Claude Garamond's original types, and quite possibly some other revivals if they had influenced the design. But the patent registrars -- just like you and me -- can see the differences between Adobe Garamond and other revivals in the marketplace, and those differences give it particular exploitable value. It is a distinct design within the criteria under which the US Patent and Trademark Office has been registering typeface designs for 170 years.

[charles_e]

John, the proof in the pudding comes when someone challenges a "newly offered product" based on a design patent. Has that ever happened? It's easy enough to say that Adobe Garamond is different. Harder to say that something else "isn't different enough." But that's where enforceable protection arises.

[oldnick]

Charles,

You already answered your last point: “What's legal,” he said, “is what I feel comfortable going into court and arguing.” The same goes for what’s illegal: the only real obstacle to action is insufficient payoff. If the stakes are high enough, lawsuits will ensue.

[John Hudson]

It's easy enough to say that Adobe Garamond is different. Harder to say that something else "isn't different enough." But that's where enforceable protection arises.

Of course. But that is a different argument from saying that the whole notion of patenting a typeface is 'the dumbest thing you've ever heard'.