[texhax] Re: question re. the license of Adobe Utopia

[William F. Adams]

On Sep 21, 2005, at 7:17 AM, Walter Schmidt wrote:

> This is a copy of the Utopia Type-1 fonts which Adobe contributed
> to the X consortium:
>
>   Utopia-Regular
>   Utopia-Italic
>   Utopia-Bold
>   Utopia-BoldItalic
>
> Permission to use, reproduce, display and distribute the listed
> typefaces is hereby granted, provided that the Adobe Copyright
> notice appears in all whole and partial copies of the software
> and that the following trademark symbol and attribution appear
> in all unmodified copies of the software:
>
>   Copyright (c) 1989 Adobe Systems Incorporated
>   Utopia (R)
>   Utopia is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Now there is the question whether it would be legal to modify the
> fonts (by adding of extra characters) and distribute the result
> (equally for free).

It's a poorly phrased license. They don't explicitly provide permission  
to modify, yet they describe what one most do in the event of  
modification.

The implication is that:

  - one may modify ``appear in all unmodified copies''
  - but the name and trademark not be used as the name of the font (but  
presumably could be included in the readme / documentation to not the  
derivation)
  - but one must include Adobe's Copyright statement ``Copyright notice  
appears in all whole and partial copies''

The X Consortium uses a BSD-style license which would support the above  
inference and be in line with that.... but I'm not a lawyer and this  
does not represent legal advice.

Has anyone tried asking the FSF or some similar group for legal advice  
on it?

Does TUG have a lawyer on retainer doing pro bono?

On the gripping hand, there is at least one instance (AIUI) of someone  
modifying (and using the Utopia name, which I'd still be chary of) for  
an internationalized version (see:  
http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/internationalization/font- 
faq.html) so there is precedent.

William

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William Adams, publishing specialist
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