Re: Licensing Fonts

[John Hasler]

Geoffrey Washburn writes:
> However, the United States has also obligated itself to respect the
> intellectual property rights of various other countries under
> international treaties.

The treaties merely mean that other countries can complain if the US fails
to alter its laws so as to do so.

> Regardless, my goals are to protect the "user's rights to use, study,
> copy, modify, and redistribute the program" that generates my typeface.

Then release it under the GPL.

> I am not all that concerned about protecting the actual images generated
> by my program describing the typeface.

So you are talking about a program with which the user generates typefaces?
If any part of what you distribute ends up in the generated typefaces place
those parts in the public domain.  If not, don't worry about it: any
copyright in the generated typefaces will belong to the user.

> I am also interested in protecting my trademark claim on the name of the
> typeface.

Then you should not let anyone use it in commerce without your explicit
permission.  Note that a trademark is not a copyright.  There are many uses
of the mark that you cannot forbid and you can lose your trademark if you
fail to enforce it where you can.
-- 
John Hasler 
john@dhh.gt.org
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA