[OpenFontLibrary] Public Domain Fonts due to lack of copyright notice

[Liam R E Quin]

On Mon, 2008-11-10 at 21:13 -0500, Fontfreedom at aol.com wrote:
> It's my understanding that anything published in the U.S. before March
> 1, 1989 without a valid copyright notice is in the public domain.
> (unless the work was registered with the copyright office, fees paid
> within a short time period.)

Your understanding is incorrect.  Please try to find some more
reliable sources of information, and don't just paste random
things vaguely related to fonts here...

In more detail... :-)

Registration affects the sorts of damages that can be claimed in
the case of wilful infringement, and that is still true in the US
today.
 
> It would seem likely SOME fonts were created during that time period
> without a copyright notice. Does anyone know of any?

You are drawing an incorrect conclusion here.

First, fonts in the US are not considered copyrightable works, so it
cannot possibly make a difference whether or not they were published
with or without a copyright notice (and you can't register them).

Second, what does it mean to publish a font?  I'd suggest possibly
a font sample with a full showing of characters might count, but
it's really not clear.  The copyright would apply in such a case
to the layout of the font sampler, and to any text used within it,
but not to the font itself.

Now, I am not a lawyer, and in any case what matters is what courts
decide, so you'd have to look at case law... but the only cases I
know of were settled out of court.

Note also that hinting may be (and in some cases is) protected by
patent, and font names can be (and usually are) trademarked, and
also that fonts designed wholly in part outside the US by people
who were not US citizens at the time are likely to be copyrighted
by the laws of other countries, and that even for a book, where
copyright law does apply, publication in the US is not sufficient
to demonstrate copyright or lack of copyright -- you also have to
show that the book was (or was not) authorized by the copyright holder.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
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