The terror of Linotype

Commentary
August 16, 2002

The terror of Linotype continues in 2002: August 2002 report

.....

¶ By now, dedicated readers must be tired of my reports on Linotype's extravagant behavior. But yes, there is another case to write about. This smells of corporate abuse and misinformation at a scale not often seen in the typographic business. The victim is "Beaumont", a nice Frenchman (très sympathique), who runs Freelang. As part of his operation, Beaumont has a Font Center, an archive of some foreign language fonts. Linotype, through its lawyer, N. Yilmaz, zoomed in on this archive and sent an obnoxious letter in which an immediate payment of 300 Euro/dollars (differing currencies are asked in different letters!) is demanded for posting fonts that are "the intellectual property of Linotype". Yilmaz's letter, as we will see below, confuses trademark, intellectual property and copyright. Some of the fonts Linotype objects to are made by Monotype, and by anyone's standard, are the intellectual property of Monotype. The problem is that the font name contains the word "Times", and this is a Linotype trademark. To call the font the "intellectual property of Linotype" when it has no outline designed in Linotype labs, and has been manufactured by Monotype, is a misrepresentation, and could be used in a defense against Linotype, should this case ever go to court. To let you judge for yourself just how outrageous Linotype is, Beaumont gave me the permission to reproduce the correspondence.

The attack

To: beaumont@freelang.com
From: MVoss@linotype.com
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 16:44:06 +0200

Infringement of Intellectual Property and Patent Design by offering our registered typefonts in the Internet

Dear Sirs,
On your website http://www.freelang.net/fonts you offer typefonts for free downloading. Two of these typefonts, however, are intellectual property of and registered for Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, Heidelberg/Germany, of which Linotype Library GmbH is a wholly-owned subsidiary. Our company has been established to do the type font production, distribution and licensing business for the well-known Linotype Typeface Library and our parent company has authorized us to prosecute all infringements of intellectual property rights in connection with the typeface business in our own name, world-wide. It goes without saying that offering the typefonts as listed below also to German website users without being authorized by an official license agreement constitutes an outright infringement of our parent company's registered typefonts.

Names Trademark Registration in/under no.

HELVETICA registered trademark DE URA-Ty 10/87 Patent Office Berlin patent design right
TIMES registered trademark

We do herewith demand that you immediately remove these typefaces from your website and request that you confirm your obligation to do so by a formal written undertaking signed by a competent officer of your company which we expect to receive until August 9th, 2002 at the latest. For your convenience, we herewith enclose a draft of such written undertaking. Should you, however, fail to cede this undertaking you must expect our French lawyers to get in touch with you in order to legally enforce this statement. All expenses arising from this procedure will be for your account. Facing the fact that your website is non-commercial we will - at this stage - resist from charging you with expenses arising from idemnification, which are normally asserted by our company. However, we reserve the right to claim the costs involved in all legal proceedings against you. These costs come up to EURO 300,00. We ask you to send us a signed and valid cheque to settle this issue.

Sincerely

Lic. iur. Nihâl Yilmaz
Director Legal Department
Linotype Library GmbH
Du-Pont-Straße 1
61352 Bad Homburg
phone: +49-6172-484-2450
fax: +49-6172-484-409
e-mail: nyilmaz@linotypelibrary.com
www.LinotypeLibrary.com

---------------------------------------------------

Attached "Cease and desist letter"

CEASE AND DESIST DECLARATION

We, the undersigned Freelang.net, [name and address of Beaumont removed by Luc Devroye] declare herewith as a binding commitment that from now on we will cease and desist from offering, selling and distributing typefonts/trademarks under the following names:

HELVETICA
TIMES

- be it on CD-ROMs or in the Internet. We, furthermore, undertake not to use any font designs being similar to the aforementioned type fonts.

I will remove any font which I don't have the right to distribute, but please be more specific :
- complete name of the font
- name of the file on my server or language under which it is refered.

---------------------------------------------------

Second email, July 29, 2002

Dear Sir
This is in response to your e-mail dated July 22nd, 2002 and your request for a complete name of the fonts as well as the name of the file servers. On your website http://www.freelang.com/download/fonts/ you offer our typefonts HELVETICA and TIMES in the following directories:

/ttf_croate_times.zip TIMES
/ttf_croate_helvetica.zip HELVETICA
/ttf_esperanto_sudeuro.zip TIMES
/ttf_polonais_europe20.zip HELVETICA
/ttf_serbe_helvetica.zip HELVETICA
/ttf_serbe_roman.zip TIMES
/ttf_vietnamien_vntimes.zip TIMES
/ttf_vietnamien_vpstimes.zip TIMES

These two typefonts are re intellectual property of and registered for Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, Heidelberg/Germany, of which Linotype Library GmbH is a wholly-owned subsidiary. Therefore, we do ask you to remove these typefonts immediately from your website and to send us the signed Cease and Desist Declaration until August 9th, 2002.

Sincerely

Lic. iur. Nihâl Yilmaz
Director Legal Department
---------------------------------------------------

A closer look

¶ The fonts referred to above are no longer on the web site. Still, it is interesting to compare the Linotype letter against the actual fonts that were there. The information below is taken directly from the fonts.
/ttf_polonais_europe20.zip HELVETICA
Copyright : (C) 1993 Howard M. Berlin, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Family : European-Helvetica
Subfamily : Regular
Font ID : European Helvetica
Full Name : European Helvetica
Version : EurHelv V2.00
Postscript : EuropeanHelvetica
Trademark :

Hm. The name Helvetica is indeed a Linotype trademark. But the name "European Helvetica" is not. Also, the data seem to belong to Howard M. Berlin.
/ttf_serbe_helvetica.zip HELVETICA and /ttf_serbe_roman.zip TIMES
Copyright : (c) Copyright 1993 - GALAXY 2001
Family : Serbian-Helvetica
Subfamily : Regular
Font ID : GLXY:Serbian-Helvetica
Full Name : Serbian-Helvetica
Version : 2.0 Fri Dec 31 15:00:00 1993
Postscript : Serbian-Helvetica
Trademark : The Great Alejew !

Copyright : (c) Copyright 1993 - GALAXY 2001
Family : Serbian-Times-Roman
Subfamily : Regular
Font ID : GLXY:Serbian-Times-Roman
Full Name : Serbian-Times-Roman
Version : 2.0 Fri Dec 31 15:00:00 1993
Postscript : Serbian-Times-Roman
Trademark : The Great Alejew !

What to make of this? Galaxy is not a well-known company. The fonts may be an adaptation of Linotype's Helvetica and Times Roman by Galaxy, but Linotype did not prove that in their letter to Beaumont.
/ttf_esperanto_sudeuro.zip TIMES
Copyright : Public domain ISO-Latin3 encoded subset of Times New Roman.
Family : Times SudEuro
Subfamily : Regular
Font ID : Times SudEuro Regular (Monotype/Microsoft)
Full Name : Times SudEuro
Version : ISO 8859-3 (1988)
Postscript : TimesSudEuro
Trademark : Times New Roman is a registered trademark of The Monotype Corporation plc.

This is the really interesting case. This is clearly a Monotype font. It is, in fact, Monotype's Times font (Times New Roman is a name that belongs to Monotype!!) with the encoding vector adapted for use with Esperanto. Monotype is no longer being attacked by Linotype regarding its use of the name Times. Linotype seems content to let them use it as Times New Roman, to differentiate it from Linotype's Times Roman. I do not think (but am not sure) that Linotype has challenged Monotype over the name Times SudEuro. If that is indeed the case, and since the Times SudEuro font has been out since 1988, I think that Linotype has forfeited its challenge, and cannot now, 14 years later, claim that it does not like that name! Trademarks have to be defended right away--all lawyers know that.
Even more outrageous is the fact that this font is called the "intellectual property of Linotype". I would like to hear Monotype's view on this. The font was made at Monotype by its staff. The data belong to Monotype, period. If I were a Linotype executive, I would fire Yilmaz on the spot over a blatant error like this that could one day cost Linotype a lot of money.
/ttf_vietnamien_vpstimes.zip TIMES
Copyright : VPS FONT
Family : VPS Times Hoa
Subfamily : Normal
Font ID : VPS Times Hoa
Full Name : VPS Times Hoa
Version : VPS Times Hoa V1.1
Postscript : VPS Times Hoa

Copyright : VPS FONT
Family : VPS Times
Subfamily : Normal
Font ID : VPS Times
Full Name : VPS Times
Version : VPS Times V1.1.
Postscript : VPS Times

VPS Font is a major Vietnamese font maker. It is not clear what the genealogical roots are of this font.
/ttf_vietnamien_vntimes.zip TIMES
Copyright : TCVN-5712
Family : .VnTimeH
Subfamily : Regular
Font ID : FontMonger:.VnTimeH
Full Name : .VnTimeH
Version : MS core font:V1.00
Postscript : VnTimeH

Copyright : Generated by Fontographer 3.5
Family : .VnTime
Subfamily : Regular
Font ID : FontMonger:.VnTime
Full Name : .VnTime
Version : MS core font:V1.00
Postscript : VnTime
Trademark :

This information is rather cryptic. Note that the name VnTime has no blank in it, so I do not see how the name could fall under the Times trademark rule. Besides, the word Times (with an s) is not present in VnTime. So, this too is an unbelievable error on the part of Yilmaz, whose competence has to be questioned.

Beaumont's reply

¶ On July 29, 2002, Beaumont replied:
- times sud euro is in public domain
- vps times is copyrighted to "vps font" (see www.vps.org then
http://www.vps.org/article.php3?id_article=122)
- vntime is freely distributed on many serious websites like United Nations (http://www.undp.org.vn/undp/vn_font/) or Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and Information (http://www.vnnews.com/t_viet/vnfonts.htm). No copyright is embeded with the font.
- europe20.zip is a shareware package copyrighted to Howard M. Berlin, Ltd (read the license).

Linotype's reply

¶ On August 13, 2002, Linotype retorts:
Dear Sir

This is in response to your e-mail dated July 29th 2002. Your statements that our typefont Times (here: europe20.zip) is a shareware package copyrighted to Howard M. Berlin Ltd. is purely false as well as the statement that our typefont Times (here: VPS.Times) is copyrighted to "VPS Font". Also the use of these typefonts on "serious websites" like United Nations or Vietnamese Minstry of Culture and Information is not justified if these respective typefonts are offered to Third Parties without being entitled by a License Agreement from Linotype Library GmbH. At any time can we prove that Times and Helvetica are intellectual property of and registered for Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, of which we are a wholly-owned subsidiary. Therefore we repeatedly do ask you to remove our typefonts Times and Helvetica from your website. Furthermore, and in order to settle this matter finally, we do now ask you to send us the signed Cease and Desist Declaration. The purpose of this declaration is a written commitment (and protection for our company) that you do not use, offer or distribute our typefonts in the future. Given the fact that you do run this website on a commercial basis, i.e. you distribute the typefonts and among these our typefont Times and Helvetica, we allow ourselves to claim the legal proceedings costs that have occured so far. These costs come up to US $ 300,00. Please send us the signed Cease and Desist Declaration as well as a valid cheque in the amount of US$ 300.00 until August 27th 2002 to settle this issue. As soon as we have received these documents we will send you a confirmation and consider this matter as closed.

Sincerely

Lic. iur. Nihâl Yilmaz

I thought that Linotype was referring to trademark protection of the names Times and Helvetica all along, but now they seem to object to the Berlin and VPS Font copyright. That is another ballgame because Berlin and VPS font claim copyright. Linotype is saying that their data were in fact copied. (If I have more time, I will check the outlines and report back on this.) What is more interesting is what Linotype is NOT mentioning--they dropped our friend Times SudEuro from the discussion, because they all of a sudden realize that they are on Monotype's territory. They are aware of their previous mistake. If I were Beaumont, I would ask them for proof that Times SudEuro is their intellectual property, as originally claimed, and see them wiggle out of that one. If they made a false claim, and if Beaumont were living in Canada or the United States, he would have a great legal case!

Copyright © 2002 Luc Devroye
School of Computer Science
McGill University
Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6
luc@cs.mcgill.ca
http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/index.html

	Commentary August 16, 2002 The terror of Linotype continues in 2002: August 2002 report
.....	¶ By now, dedicated readers must be tired of my reports on Linotype's extravagant behavior. But yes, there is another case to write about. This smells of corporate abuse and misinformation at a scale not often seen in the typographic business. The victim is "Beaumont", a nice Frenchman (très sympathique), who runs Freelang. As part of his operation, Beaumont has a Font Center, an archive of some foreign language fonts. Linotype, through its lawyer, N. Yilmaz, zoomed in on this archive and sent an obnoxious letter in which an immediate payment of 300 Euro/dollars (differing currencies are asked in different letters!) is demanded for posting fonts that are "the intellectual property of Linotype". Yilmaz's letter, as we will see below, confuses trademark, intellectual property and copyright. Some of the fonts Linotype objects to are made by Monotype, and by anyone's standard, are the intellectual property of Monotype. The problem is that the font name contains the word "Times", and this is a Linotype trademark. To call the font the "intellectual property of Linotype" when it has no outline designed in Linotype labs, and has been manufactured by Monotype, is a misrepresentation, and could be used in a defense against Linotype, should this case ever go to court. To let you judge for yourself just how outrageous Linotype is, Beaumont gave me the permission to reproduce the correspondence.
The attack	To: beaumont@freelang.com From: MVoss@linotype.com Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 16:44:06 +0200 Infringement of Intellectual Property and Patent Design by offering our registered typefonts in the Internet Dear Sirs, On your website http://www.freelang.net/fonts you offer typefonts for free downloading. Two of these typefonts, however, are intellectual property of and registered for Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, Heidelberg/Germany, of which Linotype Library GmbH is a wholly-owned subsidiary. Our company has been established to do the type font production, distribution and licensing business for the well-known Linotype Typeface Library and our parent company has authorized us to prosecute all infringements of intellectual property rights in connection with the typeface business in our own name, world-wide. It goes without saying that offering the typefonts as listed below also to German website users without being authorized by an official license agreement constitutes an outright infringement of our parent company's registered typefonts. Names Trademark Registration in/under no. HELVETICA registered trademark DE URA-Ty 10/87 Patent Office Berlin patent design right TIMES registered trademark We do herewith demand that you immediately remove these typefaces from your website and request that you confirm your obligation to do so by a formal written undertaking signed by a competent officer of your company which we expect to receive until August 9th, 2002 at the latest. For your convenience, we herewith enclose a draft of such written undertaking. Should you, however, fail to cede this undertaking you must expect our French lawyers to get in touch with you in order to legally enforce this statement. All expenses arising from this procedure will be for your account. Facing the fact that your website is non-commercial we will - at this stage - resist from charging you with expenses arising from idemnification, which are normally asserted by our company. However, we reserve the right to claim the costs involved in all legal proceedings against you. These costs come up to EURO 300,00. We ask you to send us a signed and valid cheque to settle this issue. Sincerely Lic. iur. Nihâl Yilmaz Director Legal Department Linotype Library GmbH Du-Pont-Straße 1 61352 Bad Homburg phone: +49-6172-484-2450 fax: +49-6172-484-409 e-mail: nyilmaz@linotypelibrary.com www.LinotypeLibrary.com --------------------------------------------------- Attached "Cease and desist letter" CEASE AND DESIST DECLARATION We, the undersigned Freelang.net, [name and address of Beaumont removed by Luc Devroye] declare herewith as a binding commitment that from now on we will cease and desist from offering, selling and distributing typefonts/trademarks under the following names: HELVETICA TIMES - be it on CD-ROMs or in the Internet. We, furthermore, undertake not to use any font designs being similar to the aforementioned type fonts. I will remove any font which I don't have the right to distribute, but please be more specific : - complete name of the font - name of the file on my server or language under which it is refered. --------------------------------------------------- Second email, July 29, 2002 Dear Sir This is in response to your e-mail dated July 22nd, 2002 and your request for a complete name of the fonts as well as the name of the file servers. On your website http://www.freelang.com/download/fonts/ you offer our typefonts HELVETICA and TIMES in the following directories: /ttf_croate_times.zip TIMES /ttf_croate_helvetica.zip HELVETICA /ttf_esperanto_sudeuro.zip TIMES /ttf_polonais_europe20.zip HELVETICA /ttf_serbe_helvetica.zip HELVETICA /ttf_serbe_roman.zip TIMES /ttf_vietnamien_vntimes.zip TIMES /ttf_vietnamien_vpstimes.zip TIMES These two typefonts are re intellectual property of and registered for Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, Heidelberg/Germany, of which Linotype Library GmbH is a wholly-owned subsidiary. Therefore, we do ask you to remove these typefonts immediately from your website and to send us the signed Cease and Desist Declaration until August 9th, 2002. Sincerely Lic. iur. Nihâl Yilmaz Director Legal Department ---------------------------------------------------
A closer look	¶ The fonts referred to above are no longer on the web site. Still, it is interesting to compare the Linotype letter against the actual fonts that were there. The information below is taken directly from the fonts. /ttf_polonais_europe20.zip HELVETICA Copyright : (C) 1993 Howard M. Berlin, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Family : European-Helvetica Subfamily : Regular Font ID : European Helvetica Full Name : European Helvetica Version : EurHelv V2.00 Postscript : EuropeanHelvetica Trademark : Hm. The name Helvetica is indeed a Linotype trademark. But the name "European Helvetica" is not. Also, the data seem to belong to Howard M. Berlin. /ttf_serbe_helvetica.zip HELVETICA and /ttf_serbe_roman.zip TIMES Copyright : (c) Copyright 1993 - GALAXY 2001 Family : Serbian-Helvetica Subfamily : Regular Font ID : GLXY:Serbian-Helvetica Full Name : Serbian-Helvetica Version : 2.0 Fri Dec 31 15:00:00 1993 Postscript : Serbian-Helvetica Trademark : The Great Alejew ! Copyright : (c) Copyright 1993 - GALAXY 2001 Family : Serbian-Times-Roman Subfamily : Regular Font ID : GLXY:Serbian-Times-Roman Full Name : Serbian-Times-Roman Version : 2.0 Fri Dec 31 15:00:00 1993 Postscript : Serbian-Times-Roman Trademark : The Great Alejew ! What to make of this? Galaxy is not a well-known company. The fonts may be an adaptation of Linotype's Helvetica and Times Roman by Galaxy, but Linotype did not prove that in their letter to Beaumont. /ttf_esperanto_sudeuro.zip TIMES Copyright : Public domain ISO-Latin3 encoded subset of Times New Roman. Family : Times SudEuro Subfamily : Regular Font ID : Times SudEuro Regular (Monotype/Microsoft) Full Name : Times SudEuro Version : ISO 8859-3 (1988) Postscript : TimesSudEuro Trademark : Times New Roman is a registered trademark of The Monotype Corporation plc. This is the really interesting case. This is clearly a Monotype font. It is, in fact, Monotype's Times font (Times New Roman is a name that belongs to Monotype!!) with the encoding vector adapted for use with Esperanto. Monotype is no longer being attacked by Linotype regarding its use of the name Times. Linotype seems content to let them use it as Times New Roman, to differentiate it from Linotype's Times Roman. I do not think (but am not sure) that Linotype has challenged Monotype over the name Times SudEuro. If that is indeed the case, and since the Times SudEuro font has been out since 1988, I think that Linotype has forfeited its challenge, and cannot now, 14 years later, claim that it does not like that name! Trademarks have to be defended right away--all lawyers know that. Even more outrageous is the fact that this font is called the "intellectual property of Linotype". I would like to hear Monotype's view on this. The font was made at Monotype by its staff. The data belong to Monotype, period. If I were a Linotype executive, I would fire Yilmaz on the spot over a blatant error like this that could one day cost Linotype a lot of money. /ttf_vietnamien_vpstimes.zip TIMES Copyright : VPS FONT Family : VPS Times Hoa Subfamily : Normal Font ID : VPS Times Hoa Full Name : VPS Times Hoa Version : VPS Times Hoa V1.1 Postscript : VPS Times Hoa Copyright : VPS FONT Family : VPS Times Subfamily : Normal Font ID : VPS Times Full Name : VPS Times Version : VPS Times V1.1. Postscript : VPS Times VPS Font is a major Vietnamese font maker. It is not clear what the genealogical roots are of this font. /ttf_vietnamien_vntimes.zip TIMES Copyright : TCVN-5712 Family : .VnTimeH Subfamily : Regular Font ID : FontMonger:.VnTimeH Full Name : .VnTimeH Version : MS core font:V1.00 Postscript : VnTimeH Copyright : Generated by Fontographer 3.5 Family : .VnTime Subfamily : Regular Font ID : FontMonger:.VnTime Full Name : .VnTime Version : MS core font:V1.00 Postscript : VnTime Trademark : This information is rather cryptic. Note that the name VnTime has no blank in it, so I do not see how the name could fall under the Times trademark rule. Besides, the word Times (with an s) is not present in VnTime. So, this too is an unbelievable error on the part of Yilmaz, whose competence has to be questioned.
Beaumont's reply	¶ On July 29, 2002, Beaumont replied: - times sud euro is in public domain - vps times is copyrighted to "vps font" (see www.vps.org then http://www.vps.org/article.php3?id_article=122) - vntime is freely distributed on many serious websites like United Nations (http://www.undp.org.vn/undp/vn_font/) or Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and Information (http://www.vnnews.com/t_viet/vnfonts.htm). No copyright is embeded with the font. - europe20.zip is a shareware package copyrighted to Howard M. Berlin, Ltd (read the license).
Linotype's reply	¶ On August 13, 2002, Linotype retorts: Dear Sir This is in response to your e-mail dated July 29th 2002. Your statements that our typefont Times (here: europe20.zip) is a shareware package copyrighted to Howard M. Berlin Ltd. is purely false as well as the statement that our typefont Times (here: VPS.Times) is copyrighted to "VPS Font". Also the use of these typefonts on "serious websites" like United Nations or Vietnamese Minstry of Culture and Information is not justified if these respective typefonts are offered to Third Parties without being entitled by a License Agreement from Linotype Library GmbH. At any time can we prove that Times and Helvetica are intellectual property of and registered for Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, of which we are a wholly-owned subsidiary. Therefore we repeatedly do ask you to remove our typefonts Times and Helvetica from your website. Furthermore, and in order to settle this matter finally, we do now ask you to send us the signed Cease and Desist Declaration. The purpose of this declaration is a written commitment (and protection for our company) that you do not use, offer or distribute our typefonts in the future. Given the fact that you do run this website on a commercial basis, i.e. you distribute the typefonts and among these our typefont Times and Helvetica, we allow ourselves to claim the legal proceedings costs that have occured so far. These costs come up to US $ 300,00. Please send us the signed Cease and Desist Declaration as well as a valid cheque in the amount of US$ 300.00 until August 27th 2002 to settle this issue. As soon as we have received these documents we will send you a confirmation and consider this matter as closed. Sincerely Lic. iur. Nihâl Yilmaz I thought that Linotype was referring to trademark protection of the names Times and Helvetica all along, but now they seem to object to the Berlin and VPS Font copyright. That is another ballgame because Berlin and VPS font claim copyright. Linotype is saying that their data were in fact copied. (If I have more time, I will check the outlines and report back on this.) What is more interesting is what Linotype is NOT mentioning--they dropped our friend Times SudEuro from the discussion, because they all of a sudden realize that they are on Monotype's territory. They are aware of their previous mistake. If I were Beaumont, I would ask them for proof that Times SudEuro is their intellectual property, as originally claimed, and see them wiggle out of that one. If they made a false claim, and if Beaumont were living in Canada or the United States, he would have a great legal case!
	Copyright © 2002 Luc Devroye School of Computer Science McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 luc@cs.mcgill.ca http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/index.html