rjung@sal1.usc.edu (Robert Jung) (04/08/88)
Since this is the font discussion, here's a font question I've been wanting to get answered: How does one determine the "name" of a font? Or, to give the question more specificity(?), why is the "San Francisco" font on the Macintosh called "San Francisco? Why is the "Swiss" font on GEM called "Swiss"? Why is there a font called "Hershy"????? I presume that the naming of fonts after geographical locations and/or chocolate bars is relatively arbitrary...But I could be wrong. Can anyone enlighten me on the mystical way of naming a font? --R.J. B-) P.S. "Times Roman" I can understand, but "Geneva"? "Dutch"? Whatever happened to "block shadowed", "skewered", or "computer"? <=====================================><=====================================> Disclaimer: These ideas are all mine! Mineminemineminemineminemineminemine! Send e-junk-mail through Bitnet to rjung@castor.usc.edu
ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (04/09/88)
| How does one determine the "name" of a font? Or, to give the question more |specificity(?), why is the "San Francisco" font on the Macintosh called |"San Francisco? Why is the "Swiss" font on GEM called "Swiss"? Why is there |a font called "Hershy"????? | | I presume that the naming of fonts after geographical locations and/or |chocolate bars is relatively arbitrary...But I could be wrong. Can anyone |enlighten me on the mystical way of naming a font? Fonts are created by people. Therefore the creator gets to name it. Or the company who hired the artist. Some names are intended to give the impression of being related to a well-known font without infringing on the trademarked name. Swiss, for example. Think about it. Hershey is named after the person who digitized the data, Dr. Hershey. Ken
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (04/14/88)
In article <673@nunki.usc.edu> rjung@sal1.usc.edu (Robert Jung) writes: > > Since this is the font discussion, here's a font question I've been wanting >to get answered: > > How does one determine the "name" of a font? Or, to give the question more >specificity(?), why is the "San Francisco" font on the Macintosh called >"San Francisco? Why is the "Swiss" font on GEM called "Swiss"? Why is there >a font called "Hershy"????? > > I presume that the naming of fonts after geographical locations and/or >chocolate bars is relatively arbitrary...But I could be wrong. Can anyone >enlighten me on the mystical way of naming a font? > > Aint it the truth, aint it the truth ? If you design your own font, you get to invent a name and can trade mark it, like Chuck Bigelow did with "Lucida" (tm). *Everyone* knows names like "Times Roman" and "Helvetica" are trademarked. The ones I have questions about are some of the more odd ball ones: Bocklin, Hobo, Broadway, Bobo. I would KILL for a canonical list of font names and trade marks; the best i have been able to do so far is acumulate a bunch of books with lots of illustrations of lots of fonts; this tells me approximately what the name is. Who owns that name is often a difficult question to answer however. According to my sister in law, the budding attorney, a trademark search is beyond the reach of non-lawers to do, and is expensive and tedious. Great. Are there really no easy answers to this one ? I mean really, Chicago ? Does apple own the name ?? Can *I* use it ? -- ............................................................................... richard@gryphon.CTS.COM rutgers!marque!gryphon!richard
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (04/20/88)
> According to my sister in law, the budding attorney, a trademark > search is beyond the reach of non-lawers to do, and is expensive > and tedious. Great. I suspect the tricky part is deciding whether applying trademark "foo" to product ABC conflicts with the existing trademark "foo" for product DEF. There may also be problems with the lack of an international registry for such things. And I believe that only *registered* trademarks actually have to be registered; a company can still have a right to a name if it's in active use but not registered. Although it won't solve that kind of problem, if you just want a straight lookup in a list, I believe Dialog has a trademark database. (If you're wondering whether a name is trademarked in the software industry, by the way, a fast answer is "probably". :-) ) -- "Noalias must go. This is | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology non-negotiable." --DMR | {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (04/21/88)
The question was raised earlier as to where font's names come from and the universal answer (from both posters) was the creator gets to name them. Ok, fine, good thing to know next time i create a font from scratch. A more pragmatic question is which of the common names are trademarked and which are PD: Cooper ? Bocklin ? Peignot ? Times ? Tymes ? Bookman ? Schoolbook ? Star ? Mete ? Bodoni ? Toronto ? Chicago ? Oh, I have lots of other ones, perhaps a more appropriate question would be is there some big book of trademarked font names ? My sister in law the budding attorney told me it wold cost me a fortune to do a trademark search for each name. Yuck. I dont want to hear that. Or is this wht apple calles its fonts after cities (Geneva, Toronto, etc.) and Commodore-Amiga names it's fots after gemstones (Topaz, Garnet, Sapphire etc.) Whats a guy to do ? -- Five tacos, one taco burger. Do you know where the American Dream is ? richard@gryphon.CTS.COM rutgers!marque!gryphon!richard
ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) (04/21/88)
Just out of curiosity, why do you want to know which names are trademarked? Are you starting a foundry? If you called your fonts by some meaningless concatenation of words and numbers like rhubarb-2x6b, I doubt if ITC or Monotype will come after you :-). Then again, I'm not a lawyer... I dunno. Get catalogues of typefaces from all the foundries? Join the ATypI? Ken I'm sure every word of this posting is/has been a trademark of somebody or other... :-)
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (04/23/88)
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: I wrote: >> According to my sister in law, the budding attorney, a trademark >> search is beyond the reach of non-lawers to do, and is expensive >> and tedious. Great. > >I suspect the tricky part is deciding whether applying trademark "foo" >to product ABC conflicts with the existing trademark "foo" for product >DEF. There may also be problems with the lack of an international >registry for such things. If ABC and DEF are vastly different products it is not a great problem, no ? I know nothing of the law, (esp traffic laws, apparantly), but when i worked for Cado computer systems in Torrance, Ca, we got a nasty letter from Cado systems of Sweden, purveyors of fine wall unit furniture type stuff. An agreement was reached that they wouldnt sell computers under the Cado name and we wouldnt sell furniture under the Cado name. Gak, this is horrible, I know I have other examples of the same name being a registered tm on different products, but i can't seem to dredge one up out of the atrophied mass of neurons I sometimes call a brain. Anyway, it doesnt matter, it's not really relevent. Somebody asked "why do you want to know, are you starting a type foundry ?" I wish. I have been playing around with fonts for a while and have knocked off a couple from ones in old books. Whether I release them as PD or sell them is irrelevent, I need to know the legal status of all those names. In _Colophon_ which arrived today, the following trademarks are noticed: Futura (tm) Fundicion Tipografica Neufville Gill Sans (tm) Monotype ITC American Typewriter, ITC Avant Garde Gothic, ITC Bengulat, ITC Bookman, ITC Cheltenham, ITC Franklin Gothic, ITC Galliard, ITC Garamond, ITC Korinna, ITC Lubalin Graph, ITC Machine, ITC New Baskerville, ITC Souvenir, ITC Zapf Chancery, ITC Zapf Dingbats all (tm) International Typeface Corp Corona, Excelsior, Glypha, Helvetica, Mellor, Memphis, Optima, Palatino, Trump Mediaeval, and Univers all (tm) Linotype AG and/or it's subsidiaries Lucida (tm) Bigelow & Holmes. (C'mon chuck, hit 'f') Ok, looks like those names are spoken for. Notice that Linotype has "Memphis"; does that mean Apple can/does have a (tm) for Chicago, Geneva, etc. ? Now, on page 7 is listed "The adobe type library", a partial listing. Some names have an R in a circle ater them, such as Platino, Optima, Glypha. Others have a _tm_ after the name such as Corona, Excelsior etc. (Note that these are all listed above in trademark declarations) Others have nothing after them, such as ITC Tiffany An ITC font name that isn't (tm)'s or (circle) R'd ? Huh ? Still others have nothing after the name: Stencil, Hobo, News Gothic, Cooper Black, and more. Does anybody know ??????? >Although it won't solve that kind of problem, if you just want a straight >lookup in a list, I believe Dialog has a trademark database. Ok, that sounds like a good lead. Does anybody know if they have font names in their trademark database. At, what, $200/hr i dont want to go hacking around for a few hours at 1200 baud to find they dont have fontnames. >-- >"Noalias must go. This is | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology >non-negotiable." --DMR | {ihnp4,decvax,uunet!mnetor}!utzoo!henry ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ That was my favorite part, too. -- Nominee for official California State Vegetable richard@gryphon.CTS.COM rutgers!marque!gryphon!richard
wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul) (04/23/88)
In article <3476@gryphon.CTS.COM> richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >A more pragmatic question is which of the common names are trademarked >and which are PD: > >Cooper ? Bocklin ? Peignot ? Times ? Tymes ? Bookman ? >Schoolbook ? Star ? Mete ? Bodoni ? Toronto ? Chicago ? > Generally, if you get one of the rub-on letter manufacturers' catalogs or sample books, (i.e. Letraset) or their big wall posters, they indicate which font names are protected. I would not know where to find this here in the US(*), but in Europe I would have no trouble finding books on typography in major big-city bookstores, which would also list most of the fonts and tell you if they are protected or not. (*) This country has a lot of publishers who produce great books, but most of the bookstores I have seen stink -- they carry only books with mass appeal. In Europe the better stores make a point of carrying everything, or at least being able to special-order it within a week. Here special ordering takes up to eight weeks. -- Wolf N. Paul * 3387 Sam Rayburn Run * Carrollton TX 75007 * (214) 306-9101 UUCP: ihnp4!killer!dcs!wnp ESL: 62832882 INTERNET: wnp@EESDES.DAS.NET or wnp@dcs.UUCP TLX: 910-280-0585 EES PLANO UD
welty@steinmetz.ge.com (richard welty) (04/26/88)
In article <66@dcs.UUCP> wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul) writes: >I would not know where to find this here in the US(*), but in Europe I would >have no trouble finding books on typography in major big-city bookstores, which >would also list most of the fonts and tell you if they are protected or not. Font catalogues may be found in better used bookstores. I'd also suspect that bookstores near Journalism schools are likely to be able to do something. -- Richard Welty Phone H: 518-237-6307 W: 518-387-6346 welty@ge-crd.ARPA {rochester,philabs,uunet}!steinmetz!welty ``Avalanche is better than none'' -- Bullwinkle Moose
gordan@maccs.UUCP (gordan) (04/26/88)
In article <3520@gryphon.CTS.COM> richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes:
-
-Gak, this is horrible, I know I have other examples of the same name
-being a registered tm on different products, but i can't seem to dredge
-one up out of the atrophied mass of neurons I sometimes call a brain.
-Anyway, it doesnt matter, it's not really relevent.
Well, this isn't going to help a great deal, but I found something
called the "Trade Names Dictionary" in the local library (fifth ed.,
Donna Wood, ed., Copyright 1986 Gale Research Company, ISBN
0-8103-0686-7, two vols.).
Unfortunately, it only lists trademarks for consumer-oriented products.
It turns out that "Helvetica" is a brand name for rings (i.e. jewelry),
and "Lucida" is an epoxy floor topping.
--
Gordan Palameta
uunet!mnetor!maccs!gordanhoffman@pitt.UUCP (Bob Hoffman) (04/29/88)
I just looked over the font chart for my old Graphic Systems C/A/T-4
phototypesetter (dated 9/77) and found many examples of renamed fonts.
There were no acknowledgements of copyright or trademark holders, however.
Is it the case that GSI may have made some tiny change to the fonts to
avoid prosecution?
Some examples:
GSI name Well-known name
Suave Avant Garde
Beaumont Baskerville
Orleans Optima
Pontiac Palatino
Sovran Souvenir
London Times
Boston Univers
--
Bob Hoffman, N3CVL {allegra, bellcore, cadre, idis, psuvax1}!pitt!hoffman
Pitt Computer Science hoffman@vax.cs.pittsburgh.edurichard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (04/30/88)
In article <1156@maccs.UUCP> gordan@maccs.UUCP () writes: >Well, this isn't going to help a great deal, but I found something >It turns out that "Helvetica" is a brand name for rings (i.e. jewelry), >and "Lucida" is an epoxy floor topping. You're right, it doesnt help, but it made my morning. Gawd, wait till Chuck finds out. "Hmm, lets set this in expoxy floor topping 30 pt" :-) -- Just a flaming nincompetent poop kinda guy richard@gryphon.CTS.COM rutgers!marque!gryphon!richard