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UPS, FutureBrand and FSI

UPS contracted FutureBrand for a special font for its identity. FutureBrand took FF Dax (Hans Reichel, FSI) for its derivative job without asking FSI. FSI issued this press release: FSI Fonts und Software GmbH, (FontShop International) announced today that it had reached a settlement with an internationally recognized strategic brand development firm related to a dispute involving the design, creation and licensing of a typefont developed as part of that firms work for one of its clients. The firm has denied and vigorously defended the allegation that the typeface infringed FSIs copyrights or that the typeface was an otherwise unauthorized derivative version of FSIs FF DAX and FF META typefonts. FSI first raised its claims in the beginning of February, 2005. Without any admission of liability, the parties have agreed to resolve this matter pursuant to the terms of a confidential settlement agreement in order to eliminate the uncertainties, burden and expense of potential, protracted litigation. As part of that settlement, the firm has agreed to pay FSI $17,500. The typophiles claimed that some characters such as "g" were taken verbatim from FF Meta: for example, Yves Peters claims that the "g" of FF Meta matches that of UPS Sans to the last Bezier point. This is clearly false. It seems to be true that UPS Sans borrowed a lot from FF Dax (which in turn borrows a bit from FF Sari, ex-FF New Barmen, ex-Barmeno, ex-Barmen, "all" designed by Hans Reichel). The typophiles are also saying that FSI settled for too little. This whole story plays out in the gutters of the font industry, in a society that has lost all its values. FutureBrand was wrong (by settling they implicitly admitted a rip-off, and by extrapolation, they join all the other morally bankrupt corporations), and the typophiles are wrong for putting dollars ahead of sense (17,500 dollars for the equivalent of using one type family????) and supporting the computer count model of "licensing" electronic data, which pushes companies into a corner. For a full report, in German, check Ulrich Stiehl's analysis.

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David and Goliath ⦿