This story takes place in February 1999. It involves two font designers, Lisa Jenkins and Boris Mahovac, and members of an organization called Typeright.
A few years ago, Boris Mahovac, a great Croatian graphic designer and typographer, created the font Kalendar. The font had a copyright to Abeceda dizajn, Boris' outfit at the time.
Based on this wonderful font, Lisa D. Jenkins of Agent J created a lookalike font, in what appears to be an enterprise that started from scratch. She placed a demo version of this font, KitchenTiles (shown at the top of this page), on her web page and wrote there: This font was originally designed by Boris Mahovac of Abeceda dizajn. I liked the look of it, and thought it should be a fairly easy font to re-create in order to test out the Softy software. I changed a great number of the characters from his original design mostly for readability reasons. This font includes pretty much all the international characters so that everyone can enjoy it. The demo was only a sample of the full font, which was sold by Agent J. In the font itself, we find the following notice: (Copyright 1997-1998 Lisa D. Jenkins; based on "Kalendar" by Boris Mahovac/Abeceda dizajn.)
Thus far, all is fine, as characters themselves cannot be copyrighted in the United States. And Lisa was pretty honest about the process, and even showed tremendous admiration for Boris Mahovac. Is not every foundry recreating its own version of Garamond or Bodoni?
I placed a link to her site on my site, and thought that it was one of the nicest sites, with fine fonts, and proper credit given when credit was due.
February 8, 1999: Boris Mahovac sends me the following email:
From: "Boris Mahovac" (alphabet.design@sympatico.ca)
To: luc@cs.mcgill.ca
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 12:34:59 -0500
Hello Mr Devroye,
On the page
http://luc.devroye.org/commercialfonts.html
you write:
[quote]
Agent J
Lisa D. Jenkins designs some fonts, such as Xanadu and Kitchen Tiles. Explanation for the gorgeous Kitchen Tiles: This font was originally designed by Boris Mahovac of Abeceda dizajn...
[end quote]
I'd like to say that Ms Jenkins does not offer the Kitchen Tiles font anymore, since she was contacted by members of TypeRight, and organization fighting for the protection of font designs as intelectual property. The members acted on my complaint that Ms Jenkins was making money off my design.
As the designer of the font Kalendar, upon which Ms Jenkins has based her Kichen Tiles font, I would appreciate if you could do the following:
1. update the link to my personal web page on:
http://luc.devroye.org/designers.html
at Boris Mahovac
2. put a link on my name under Agent J entry, so that people can compare the two designs, and make an informed decision.
3. if you could also list my studio at
http://luc.devroye.org/commercialfonts.html
I would be really gratefull.
Thank you, and have a nice day!
Boris Mahovac R.G.D., member of ARGD/ON and A.Typ.I
Alphabet Design
Toronto, Canada
http://www3.sympatico.ca/alphabet.design/index.html
So, Mahovac says he complained to Typeright, and apparently, some members of Typeright pressured Lisa Jenkins into removing the offending font. % Maybe they contacted her internet provider, who knows? I find this a very very sad story indeed.
February 13, 1999: Clive Bruton sends me the following email, which partially contradicts Mahovac's story.
Subject: Reference to TypeRight
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 20:43:25 +0000
To: (luc@cs.mcgill.ca)
cc: "TypeRight-L list" (TypeRight-L@lists.typeright.org)
Hi Luc,
I'd like to address some claims that you have made on your web site,
principally at:
http://luc.devroye.org/jenkins.html
I believe it is entirely false that TypeRight as a group ever pressurised
Lisa Jenkins into removing her "copy" of Boris Mahovac's "Kalendar". It
is possible that an individual member wrote to her, but that certainly
wasn't endorsed by the group as a whole, and no such proposal of a
message exists in the group's archive.
Certainly a member wrote to Mr Mahovac giving him some advice on the
issue, one of the clear points given in this message was that US
Copyright law was of no use to him in this situation, and that perhaps he
should look to Croation law (given that he is Croation, and that the
typeface may have been created in Croatia - this caveat was also pointed
out to him).
TypeRight is an entirely voluntary organisation, I fail to see how it
could put pressure on anyone as you describe. The aim of the group is to
promote the recognition of typefaces as material suitable for
intellectual property protection in the US and around the world.
Could you please remove these remarks from your web site. You have no
evidence on which to base them, apart from your deductive conclusions and
an email from Mr Mahovac. Further you don't seem to have any evidence
from Ms Jenkins that TypeRight acted as you state.
If you do have further evidence, as a founding member of TypeRight, I'd
be very interested in seeing it.
Alternatively include this email in its entirety on the page referenced
above.
-- Clive Bruton
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 22:37:09 +0000
From: Clive Bruton
To: "Luc Devroye"
cc: "TypeRight-L list"
Luc,
... (text omitted)
No member of TypeRight's work was involved in this issue.
TypeRight did not contact Ms Jenkins.
... (text omitted)
-- Clive
So, Clive and I both contacted Lisa, and she confirmed that she was indeed pressured into removing KitchenTiles in February 1998 by one of the members of TypeRight, Chris MacGregor. (These were not her words: in fact, she said that MacGregor contacted her, not TypeRight as I had originally reported, and that everything else on my page was essentially correct, and that page was the one on which I used the term "pressure".) Clive Bruton's reaction in yet another email:
The sequence of events is as follows: Boris Mahovac contacts Chris MacGregor privately. Chris and Boris discuss the issue. Chris contacted Lisa. Chris passed on Boris' message to TypeRight. A member of TypeRight gave some advice to Boris as previously described to you. Boris Mahovac confirms this account of the events.
Chris MacGregor wrote to confirm Clive's timeline. He said he did not put any pressure on Lisa, but he did refer to her font removal as follows: "I am very happy that Lisa righted the wrong". Well, I do not think Lisa was "wrong". Would Lisa have removed the font if Chris had not contacted her? I don't think so. Thus, that contact triggered the removal. Would Chris MacGregor have been contacted by Mahovac had he not been a member of TypeRight? Probably not. So, any actions of his on this issue after that initial contact were a consequence of that membership. The sad victim of this whole affair is Lisa, who was talked into removing a perfectly legal font made by herself from her site, after having been contacted by Chris MacGregor, who may or may not have acted as a member of TypeRight.
Luc Devroye