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Rip-off? You tell me.

S

Steve C.

New Member

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Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Looks about a 98% likeness.


People like that should be shot. I mean it.... SHOT !!


They have no respect for anything.... especially others.
 
Rodi

Rodi

New Member
Sometimes these thieves do not cover themselves, buy a copy and you can checkout certain details, like who has the copyright. Sometimes they miss basic stuff and all you need is a nice letter from a lawyer.

Steve, Adrian Frutiger has been ripped off so many ways, its a nice club, albeit a slightly poorer one than it ought to be.
 
Rodi

Rodi

New Member
royster13 said:
How much do you have to change a design so that "inspiration" is not copying?....
Click to expand...

That question is the one that perplexes the deepest minds in Typography. For instance when you look at Berthold Garamond and Adobe Garamond, they are so close, I mean pinch me close. Adobe has a patent on Garamond, as if they originated the thing, Paris, Washington, my eye!

Thievery is a sure way to producing income in the font game. When Bitstream did it to Linotype (it has only been in the last 5 years they "Licensed" the fonts they pirated from Lino), guess who made so much money and accolades, Mathew Carter! A saint is a thief in that business.

Look at the font Today Sans, then compare it with the Adobe "Original" font Cronos.

Segoe from Microsoft is Frutiger.

Should we make a list?
 
Fred Weiss

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
Rodi said:
Sometimes these thieves do not cover themselves, buy a copy and you can checkout certain details, like who has the copyright. Sometimes they miss basic stuff and all you need is a nice letter from a lawyer.

Steve, Adrian Frutiger has been ripped off so many ways, its a nice club, albeit a slightly poorer one than it ought to be.
Click to expand...

The theft and republishing of type has resulted in the bankruptcy or failure of:

  • URW - The inventor of electronic type
  • Berthold
  • Monotype
  • The Font Company
  • and many others
 
Rodi

Rodi

New Member
Actually Fred, that is not really so on 2 of the 4. Berthold never lost money on fonts, they lost money on their fickle front ends (we had a Diatronic, excellent letter quality and great H&J, lousy on consistancy) for such a long time it killed them.

The Font Company just never got the traction that they needed. Their fonts were great, but they had only classic fonts, not much new.

Monotype was kind of like Berthold, but they just went to retreat mode and got cozy with Agfa and now they own ITC, LInotype amongst others. Monotype, they made Book Antiqua (Palatino Ripoff) and Arian (Helvetica snookering).
 
Jillbeans

Jillbeans

New Member
It does look like a copycat.
What can you do about it?
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but it would cheese me off too.
Love....Jill
 
Marlene

Marlene

New Member
that font does look a lot like yours. you really have to look at the letters to see any differnce like the "A".
 
SignosaurusRex

SignosaurusRex

Active Member
Have you ever contacted JW about it Steve?
Definitely a rip-off in my opinion and not just mild plagiarism. The audacity to charge $50.00 for a knock-off of an original font priced at $20.00 is hilarious to say the least. Do they think that charging much more is going to make buyers think that they are getting a better quality original? I would hope that most buyers would have enough savvy to recognize this sort of practice and not do business with them or at least not purchase fonts (produced?) by the particular (designer?) . The perp in this case does seem to produce some nice additions to certain typefaces but does not seem to produce much of anything original in its nature. JMHO
 
S

Steve C.

New Member
When I first learned of it, I sent a message to the "designer" and asked him
to please remove the font from his web site. His responce was that their are
a lot of fonts that look alike and there's nothing I can do about it. He's right,
I don't really have any recourse. But, strange that he bought my Art&Sign
package just 3 months before.... Hmmmmmmm.:doh:
 
cptcorn

cptcorn

adad
I agree that they look very similar. I would take action.

My photography Mentor once told me, if it's not worth actually pursuing someone for copyright/ip theft, then it's not worth complaining about it because essentially you're saying your product is worth more in someone else's hands than your own.

Saying not much can be done is like you pissing in the wind and then convincing yourself it's raining.
 
Pat Whatley

Pat Whatley

New Member
My completely unfounded mental image of Veer is shot. For some reason I always thought they'd be above that.

Fred Weiss said:
Basically you cannot use the existing vectors from the original font and you cannot name it the same as the original font.
Click to expand...

Soooo.....not that I ever intended to sell it does than mean if I send somebody the serifed version of Futura I was playing with, and they send it to somebody and they send it out....that eventually somebody is gonna lawyer up and sue somebody else?

Just curious because I'm dang sure using the original vectors.
 
Fred Weiss

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
What you can do about it is to buy the font and then compare where the nodes are. If any of the characters are identical then you have an open and shut case.

Adobe used that argument against The Learning Company (KeyFonts Pro) 12 years ago and got a million dollar judgment plus TLC agreed to never again sell any product that competed with any Adobe product. Here's a link to the article about it. It's old so I doubt many of the links in it still work.
 
Replicator

Replicator

New Member
It looks damn close about 95%, I would let Veer know . . .

Not much you can do about it . . . You may want to send the designer the link that Fred posted above :ROFLMAO:
 
Fred Weiss

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
Pat Whatley said:
My completely unfounded mental image of Veer is shot. For some reason I always thought they'd be above that.



Soooo.....not that I ever intended to sell it does than mean if I send somebody the serifed version of Futura I was playing with, and they send it to somebody and they send it out....that eventually somebody is gonna lawyer up and sue somebody else?

Just curious because I'm dang sure using the original vectors.
Click to expand...

The vectors are protected under patent law regarding mathematical formulas. That was the point that Adobe won in 1998 in the article I referenced. You can be inspired by it and you can even scan and trace new vectors, but you can't legally use the original ones and distribute the results. You can certainly keep it for your own exclusive use though.
 
SignosaurusRex

SignosaurusRex

Active Member
Fred Weiss said:
What you can do about it is to buy the font and then compare where the nodes are. If any of the characters are identical then you have an open and shut case.

Adobe used that argument against The Learning Company (KeyFonts Pro) 12 years ago and got a million dollar judgment plus TLC agreed to never again sell any product that competed with any Adobe product. Here's a link to the article about it. It's old so I doubt many of the links in it still work.
Click to expand...

I was thinking the very same thing.

I would think that the sales of "Hucklebuck" at the inflated $50.00 a whack could prove to be a huge mistake if a case against the designer and or Veer is won.
 
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