Industry Letter to Copyright Office - Please Share

Stuart Sandler
Stuart Sandler Posts: 396
in Type Business
Frank Martinez of the Martinez Group PLLC is known throughout the font industry as "The Font Lawyer" and for decades has been the champion for font copyright IP protection for fonts. I offered to share his request to this forum in the hopes that many of my fellow US based font creators will reach out to him directly to participate.

From Frank:
 "I am working with Monotype on an industry letter (on behalf of US based font foundries) that we will be sending to the Copyright Office and for use in legislative lobbying. The purpose of the letter is to urge the Copyright Office to return to a policy of granting copyrights for font software and to inform the Congress how the loss of the ability to protect font software is harming the font industry."

Those wishing to participate should e-mail Frank directly at fm@martinezgroup.com with the name of the foundry/foundries and the name of the person who is authorizing the inclusion of the foundry name(s) as part of this industry letter - which I am participating in on behalf of all of my font foundries in support of this initiative.
Tagged:

Comments

  • Matthew Smith
    Matthew Smith Posts: 100
    edited December 5

    I have some questions.

    Who has Frank or Monotype spoken with outside of Monotype prior to drafting this letter?

    Has any open dialogue occurred regarding this topic that can be read or accessed by other foundries or independent designers?

    How did you hear about this? Did Frank reach out to you personally? Were you contacted by Monotype? Was there some kind of press release around this?

    Has Monotype disclosed any real life examples of where they or anyone in the industry has been harmed by this? Better yet, have they disclosed why they are interested in pursuing this now?

    Is there a draft of this letter so far or perhaps an outline? Or is it too early for that still?

    I am interested in participating, but don’t necessarily want to authorize the inclusion of my foundry names as part of this industry letter quite yet. Is that possible?

    Will this result in broad copyright language that will permit big players like Monotype to stake claim over historical faces?

    When the largest company in an industry is advocating for stronger laws, I can’t help but be skeptical of how they will leverage that against smaller competitors. Historically speaking, this tends to be the case in the US. Even if the legal cases get thrown out or don’t hold up in court, litigation is a bullying tactic often employed by the powerful to extinguish competitors.[1][2][3]

    1. ‘Buc-ee’s’ Sues ‘Nut Huggers’ Underwear Brand in Bizarre Logo Lawsuit
    2. Why Uncrustables maker J.M. Smucker sued Trader Joe's over PB&J sandwiches
    3. Smucker’s is in a trademark fight with small business over round, crustless sandwiches

  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 351
    Some further discussion of this can be found in this Mastodon thread.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,554
    Where is the letter? Are people actually allowed to read a draft before agreeing to sign their names to it?

    I would absolutely trust Monotype to fuck this up and even further diminish protection for fonts in the US. Also, where is the input from the industry? They’re asking people to add their names to a letter, without providing any opportunity for anyone else in the industry to have input on the content of that letter.

    I am not encouraged by the sloppiness of the wording in the request:
    urge the Copyright Office to return to a policy of granting copyrights for font software
    The Copyright Office does not grant copyrights, it registers copyrights. I hope that the wording of the letter itself is more legally precise and accurate.
  • Scott-Martin Kosofsky
    Scott-Martin Kosofsky Posts: 435
    It’s my guess that the management of Monotype has been ordered by the company’s owners, HGGC, to do whatever they can to increase the value of the company so it can be sold off without too much of a loss. Because HGGC is a private equity firm, we can't really know how much money they've lost on Monotype, but I suspect it's quite a lot, especially as the management team they've installed knows nothing about the business they're in and every marketing strategy they come up with is laughably clueless.
    The HGGC Monotype page states: “Monotype is a one-of-a-kind platform that delivers scarce evergreen font IP, software and solutions through a scaled omnichannel monetization engine." Evergreen font IP? How scarce? How do you prove that to a potential buyer? Start with enormous pile of copyright registrations. How defensible are these registrations?
    Nobody knows. Better Call Frank! 

Categories