Oops: French Copyright Logo Infringes Copyright
Oh, the irony, it hurts!
It looks like France's copyright agency is guilty of a little copyright infringement itself. According to TorrentFreak, the logo Hadopi unveiled last week was created with an unlicensed font called 'Bienvenue.'
Designed by a France Telecom employee ten years ago, Bienvenue is an exclusive corporate typeface, meaning the logo can only be used for Orange and France Telecom products. Speaking about the Hadopi logo, the font's creator said that though the ‘d’ and ‘p’ had been changed slightly and the rest of the font stretched out, it was not enough to class it as a new design.
French news site Numerama contacted Plan Créatif, the agency responsible for the creation of the Hadopi logo and the company confirmed that their font violated the rights for the Bienvenue font, but claimed it was a mere "error of manipulation."
TF reports that while Hadopi is scrambling to find a new logo and France Telecom won't be taking legal action against the copyright body, the same cannot be said for the designer of Bienvenue, Jean-François Porchez who has already contacted his lawyer.
As for the logo, Hadopi has purchased the 'FS Lola' and 'Bliss' fonts from two British companies and are hurriedly recreating the logo.
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ridiculous
Right on your face Hadopi!
hehehe....that's funny!
hmmm. I guess this is a stupid question, but why dis the agency now go in a hurry licensing two fonts from two british companies, instead of of licensing the font they already use ? THey will have to pay for the unauthorised use anyway, so why throw away money at redesining the logo if they could just pay a bit more and sort the legalities out ?
opps! some one forgot a boost!
+1 jonny, it funny.
I'm totally not surprised, if only because copyrighted content is so hard to keep track of when you need to get a license. You'd think logo creators would be more conscientious about using proprietary fonts than the rest of us, but I'm sure things like this slip through all the time without actual intent to swipe it.
Of course, the persons responsible should be pursued with the fullest extent of the law unless they settle for a relatively small amount. That's how things happen in America, anyway.
Hippy.
You shouldn't even be able to copyright a typeface unless it is totally custom letters. The H and the O in the above logo have nothing that sets them apart from 1000 other typefaces.
Fail!
Font's should not be able to be copyrighted period, it is completely ridiculous. Hundreds of fonts look exactly the same, especially in this case where I can easily find more than one font on microsoft word that looks like that.
i'm gona Copyright what just happened so it can't happen no more !
wouldnt patenting a typeface be like patenting a form of painting? Like maybe a painter wanted to patent the way he used brush strokes or dots to create a painting. Cause artists develop techniques that clearly can be spotted in all their works. So my point is, patenting that way you draw a "g" or an "a", isn't that a little silly???
Font's should not be able to be copyrighted period, it is completely ridiculous. Hundreds of fonts look exactly the same, especially in this case where I can easily find more than one font on microsoft word that looks like that.
Hundreds of fantasy novels read exactly the same, yet you can still copyright your Tolkien rip-off. The fact is that making a good font is hard work and takes creativity, plus there's a market for it. People will pay to use your font if it's what they're looking for. It has been this way ever since type was carved out of wooden blocks. I don't see why a font can't be copyrighted like a book or a painting, since it's still a creative art and at least it's marketable.
wouldnt patenting a typeface be like patenting a form of painting? Like maybe a painter wanted to patent the way he used brush strokes or dots to create a painting. Cause artists develop techniques that clearly can be spotted in all their works. So my point is, patenting that way you draw a "g" or an "a", isn't that a little silly???
You don't patent fonts, you copyright them. Patenting is something else altogether: you could patent a method for putting printed words on the page like with a new kind of printing press, or you could patent a way to make blocks of type, but you can't patent the characters on the blocks. And artists sometimes do copyright the way they draw letters, as most letterers in graphic arts and comics create at least one font for their own lettering.
OK, Where's the Calibri?
shit, now i'm not sure whether i should send this comment. The font i'm using may be copyrighted.
It seems that even the name "Hadopi" has already been registered as a trademark to the INPI (the French National Institute for Intellectual Property) by a man called Renaud Veeckman, 6 month before the French government try.
:-D
Because there are just so many ways to write those 6 letters.
shit, now i'm not sure whether i should send this comment. The font i'm using may be copyrighted.
It most likely is, but you have been given an end user license to use it by the license provided by your sw and/or the site you're typing your comment has a license for all their users to use it, etc., etc.