Reg - Linotype copyright action on Adobe-format fonts

[Bill Stewart]

"ATM" is "Adobe Type Manager".  Linotype is a big font house.
Intellectual Property laws for fonts are normally even stranger than for 
regular material,
but if any of these are in Postscript, they're also programs,
so there may be DMCA issues, and there's obviously some contractual
relationship with Adobe that lets them copyright implementations.
(I have *no* idea if there's Dmitri Sklyarov-related material here,
as in "Did Adobe do Something Bad, or was Someone Else careless",
but it's entertaining speculation, at least in the absence of actual 
knowledge.)

Does anybody know ATM implementation details?
Adobe's web page describes ATM Light as a
	"Free font utility for viewing and printing PostScript fonts
	Adobe. Type Manager. (ATM.) Light is a system software component
	that automatically generates high-quality screen font bitmaps
	from the PostScript. outlines in Type 1 or OpenType. format."
which implies that at least some ATM fonts are real Postscript.



Fairly usable Fair Use reformatted excerpt from The Register's article follows.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23427.html

Linotype gets heavy over free ATM font downloads
By John Lettice  - john.lettice at theregister.co.uk
Posted: 17/12/2001 at 12:15 GMT

German company Linotype Library GmbH is flexing its ATM font copyright 
muscles via 'cease and desist' letters with potential $30,000 legal tabs 
attached. The fonts in question do seem to be owned by Linotype (or to be 
strictly accurate, its parent company Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG), but 
are probably part of a batch that accidentally wandered into the shareware 
sector in the early 90s.

The fonts are frequently found for download on OS/2 sites, and have tended 
to propagate via mirrors, with the assumption that they're shareware 
propagating along with them. This was the case for Ian Manners, who runs 
www.os2site.com, and who contacted The Register after receiving his letter 
from Linotype.
....
What does seem clear is that Linotype is making heavy legal noises in order 
to clear the fonts off download sites. And strangely enough, the fonts 
themselves (Cascade, Flora, Frutiger, Helvetica, Isadora, Linotext, 
Linoscript, Optima, Palatino, Peignot, Present, Shelley and Univers), are 
currently on sale at Linotype Library's site.

The fonts Ian was hosting complicate matters further, in that internally 
they have an Adobe copyright stamp in them. Adobe itself sells the fonts in 
question, and labels them as Linotype's trademark on its site. It seems 
fairly clear that the fonts are Linotype's property, and that even people 
offering cloned versions under the same names are going to be vulnerable to 
legal threats. From the Linotype letter, however, it doesn't seem to be the 
case that they're universally trademarked throughout the world, which could 
make actual legal action complicated.