Hasbro Sued For Font Piracy On My Little Pony Merchandise
from the live-by-the-copyright,-die-by-the-copyright dept
Live by the copyright, die by the copyright, as I've said before. See, copyright protectionism is sort of like taking a moral stand: when someone asserts the importance of their copyright, they assert it for all copyrights. For most of us, this is not a problem, because we don't spend a great deal of time bashing others over the head with the copyright cudgel. But when you're Hasbro? Especially considering all of the many various actions taken by the company to shut down anything having to do with its My Little Pony property? Well, then it would be nice if the company might at least make sure it wasn't committing copyright infringement in selling that property as well.
But that appears to be asking too much. Hasbro is finding itself the subject of a copyright infringement action over the font it uses on basically everything My Little Pony.
According to Font Brothers, American toy multinational Hasbro did so when it started to use the “Generation B” font for its My Little Pony products, without permission. The Generation B font was created by Harold Lohner and is commercially exploited by Font Brothers. One of the best known uses of the font is for the popular My Little Pony toys and videos. However, according to a complaint filed at a New York federal court Hasbro failed to obtain a proper license, so My Little Pony is using a pirated font.From the complaint itself, it appears Hasbro was not only using the font internally without a license, but was distributing it to third parties as well.
Upon information and belief, Defendant Hasbro has used or instructed others to use unauthorized copies of the GENERATION B Font in the creation of, but not limited to, all products, goods, merchandise, television and film properties, and advertising materials connected with the “My Little Pony” product line and by way of third party vendors authorized to sell “My Little Pony” branded goods bearing the term “My Little Pony” using the GENERATION B Font, showings of which are annexed hereto as Exhibit D.Oops. The complaint goes on to note that Hasbro had repeatedly been made aware of the lack of license and authorization for the font, but that the company had failed to even bother to respond. Keep in mind that the company appears to have used this font on tons of products and merchandise, including on its own site. And distributed it as well. All while being aware that it was unathorized to do so. Sort of puts a couple of fan-made My Little Pony games into perspectrive, doesn't it?
Upon information and belief, Defendant Hasbro has not purchased the special license from Font Brothers which authorizes the use of the GENERATION B font software as a resource for use on goods for sale and for distribution to third parties or in the creation of its various HASBRO “My Little Pony” branded goods, products, and/or services.
And, lest you think that this is all some misunderstanding in which Hasbro used a different font that was somewhat simliar to GENERATION B:
While small differences can sometimes be tricky to prove that an unauthorized font is used, in this case it is also used on Hasbro’s website. The stylesheet of the website specifically mentions the Generation B and a copy of the font stored and distributed through Hasbro’s servers.Hasbro has since removed all uses of the font from its website, which rings more as an admission at this point than complying with any requests. And, sure, maybe super-aggressive copyright protection over the use of fonts can be a little silly at times, but it's going to be hard to find any friends to fight in your corner when you've been beating everyone over the head with copyright all these years.
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Filed Under: copyright, fonts, my little pony
Companies: hasbro
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http://www.mattyhex.net/CMR/?id=about
Looks like the person behind this font actually did better coordination with Harold Lohner than Hasbro did? I am officially amused.
(If memory serves, I actually wrote a script that automatically wraps TTF files in iOS provisioning profiles just so I could more easily install that specific font on an iPad. Though I didn't share that work until "SansBullshitSans" came about.)
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http://www.mattyhex.net/CMR/?id=about
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Fonts
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Re: Fonts
Hear that?
Please pay attention. Learn from this. And do by following Capt ICE Enforcer's wonderful example!
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37 CFR 202.1(e)
Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition, Chapter 900, pp.13-14
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Re: 37 CFR 202.1(e)
Bitmap fonts are not copyrightable. Scaleable ones are.
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Re: Re: 37 CFR 202.1(e)
Look closely at the second paragraph that I extracted from the Copyright Office Compedium: Even a scaleable font is not copyrightable as typeface. The generating instructions may indeed be copyrightable code, but in all cases, that code must be carefully distinguished from the typeface itself.
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(Design patents are not without problem, but they're much less problematic than copyright. There's less international coordination for them, and their duration is considerably shorter.)
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Re: Re: Re: 37 CFR 202.1(e)
There is nothing to stop people creating fonts that look very similar to existing font families. That is done all the time. However, creating a full font family is a massive job and frequently the similar free fonts don't have the detail and finesse of the licenced one.
You're trying to confuse a visual representation of a font - which can't be copyrighted in the same way you can't copyright your own handwriting - with a file that defines the instructions to recreate that font face and spacings consistently - which can be copyrighted.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: 37 CFR 202.1(e)
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The look may not be protectable, but the font, which does contain a form of computer software instructions, is protectable. Hasbro HAS distributed and used unauthorized copies of that font software.
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Re: 37 CFR 202.1(e)
In any event, as has been pointed out here... by law, type setting cannot be copyrighted, probably for exactly the above reason: to prevent some greedy type font company from after the fact demanding $100-a-book royalties for the use of their font in all those sold copies of WAR AND PEACE.
That's probably also why Hasbro ignored all the letters from that company saying they hadn't licensed the use of it in all their products. Hasbro probably looked at the letters and said, "What sort of ludicrous, ignoramus, bullshit is this? Type setting is NOT copyrightable! It explicitly says so right there in the copyright law! Go pound sand!" And they promptly circular-filed the letters.
Mind you, this doesn't mean I absolve Hasbro of being a heavy handed copyright/trademark extremism company, because they really are, but the case of the type fonts, I think they're in the right. I about blew a frakking gasket when I originally saw the news of this, for precisely the reasons outlined above. This is purely greed on the part of the type font company. Nothing else. The fact that Hasbro has shown themselves to also be greedy (in that they bight the fan-based hands that feed them, by stomping on fan-made MLP stuff) is neither here nor there.
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Re: Re: 37 CFR 202.1(e)
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Font of earnings?
The only excuse I can think of might be statutory damages, but still.
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Re: Font of earnings?
Yea, I'm not seeing millions in actual damages, but I've no informed clue of font licensing on that scale either.
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Re: Font of earnings?
Especially for such a fine company that seems to take the most minor of copyright infringements so deadly seriously.
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Re: Font of earnings?
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Re: Font of earnings?
Hasbro does $100M in the girls' toys market every quarter. This doesn't even address licensing plays. So can we agree that one percent of that is reasonable?
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Hasbro probably did have a broadcast license at least
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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/nbcu-sued-harry-potter-font-theft-lawsuit-351823
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I could picture Hasbro not only winning, but perhaps even running these guys out of business.
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if it was, in fact, not properly licensed by hasbro and if recent copyright case rulings are anything to go by, i'd expect hasbro to be run out of business.
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Copyright misuse
The current law, practice, and policy firmly places typefaces outside the scope of copyright. Now, at the same time, a computer program which generates a typeface may be copyrightable and licensable as a program. But every attempt to leverage license terms for a computer program in order to obtain an improper monopoly in uncopyrightable typeface —ought to be condemned as misuse.
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Re: Copyright misuse
But maybe they ARE trying to protect their GenerationB.otf file which Hasbro has used, and distributed, without a license.
Hasbro could expend the significant resources to develop their own vector type face font that looks the same. But they didn't. Or they could have licensed the one they used, but they didn't.
(Elsewhere in this thread, it is discussed that there is another look-alike font that was independently developed.)
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The visual design of the font *itself* cannot -- that's (potentially) subject to a design patent, but not copyright.
I don't know if "Generation B" has a design patent, or when it expires. But considering the way the specific font was referenced on the web site, part of what's going on here would appear not to be complete bullshit -- looks to me like there was an actual copyright violation there.
As for the merchandise, that's less clear. If the design patent has expired and they used a "clean room implementation" so to speak, not using the TTF or other file under copyright without permission... there *might* be no "there" there, from a legal standpoint.
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Giant companies like Hasbro feel that, in being giant, they're doing others "a favor" by using (and automatically locking) their work for very little or free.
Don't forget that typeface can be trademarked when used in conjunction with a color and phrase.
Hasbro could theoretically trademark (if it hasn't already) the phrase "Friendship is Magic" written using GenerationB.otf, colored in pink.
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Are we finally talking about
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