The Study On Copyright Protection Of Fonts

With the development of modern technology, fonts carried only by physical type-piecesnow are digitalized and widely applied in screen displaying as well as digital typography. Thisimprovement provided lots of convenience to Chinese character input and output and alsoresulted in economic prosperity in font industry. However, a progressive decline occurred afterseveral years. Due to the unclear legal nature of fonts, the interest of font designers andcompanies can be hardly protected, and this, in turn, brings about a sharp decrease in theinvestment and the R&D of new font products. This paper, after discussing whether individualfont character, font and font software is copyright work, concluded that original individual fontcharacter and font software should be protected by copyright basing on the font industry status inour country.The Introduction presents the significance of this study as well as the structure of this paper.Also it reviews precedent study on copyright protection of fonts and chiefly introducesrepresentative viewpoints.Chapter2defines the concept of fonts so as to distinguish it from other related conceptssuch as typeface, glyph, etc.Chapter3study whether or not fonts can be copyrighted. Specifically, it firstly discusses thecriterion of originality, and then analyses the originality of individual font character, font andfont software separately.Chapter4introduces provisions and cases in several countries, and summarizes thecharacteristic feature of different institutional arrangements.Chapter5discusses several controversial issues by analyzing three cases that caused widepublic concern, including the depression in font industry, inadequate protection for font, andalso the legitimacy of “secondary charges”. Then it put forward some views and suggestions forthe improvement of copyright protection of font.The Conclusion presents summarizes and reasserts important viewpoints in this paper.