Using Times New Roman for academic paper without license? As far as I understand Times New Roman is not a free font but a license to use it for personal purposes is included in products like Microsoft Word. Suppose I do not own a copy/license to any such product that includes the font. Can I legally just download the font from the internet and use it to write and publish an academic paper?
The question of whether publishing a document that uses a font is a violation of the copyright of that font depends on the method used for publication, but leaving that aside, in the specific case of the font Times New Roman, the answer is a qualified yes. Times New Roman was one of the fonts included in Microsoft's Core Fonts for the Web package in the late 1990s. This was a package of specific fonts which Microsoft made available for free distribution. The license that was used specifically allowed redistribution of the fonts as long as they remained in their original form and were not sold or bundled for profit. Microsoft discontinued the project a few years later, and newer versions of the fonts are no longer available under the same license, however the original font license remains in effect for the specific versions which were released under it. This version of Times New Roman is quite old and has a limited character set, but it's still usable. As long as you distribute the original font package unchanged with the EULA intact, and do not sell it, you are allowed to distribute an unlimited number of copies of the font.
The creator of the derivative work has copyright in the derivative work. The copyright would protect only the new elements of the derivative work. Wikipedia is a good place to start. In the case of a book with updated grammar, depending on the extent of the changes, it would probably be easier to copy the original directly than to eliminate the updates from a copy of the derivative work.
This appears to mean that the author, while retaining copyright, is allowing anyone to make copies without asking permission from the author. This would seem to be similar to a CC-BY license, or perhaps more exactly a CC-BY-ND license, as the author has apparently not granted the right to create modified versions or other derivative works. This does not require one who makes such copies to distribute them free of charge, unless there is another provision not mentioned in the question. Amazon, or anyone else, would be free to sell copies at any price they cared to ask. If the author wanted to limit the sales price, that would take another provision, and might not be enforceable.
If you are using just the names, there is no issue - you can't copyright a fact. If you are using actual images (you appear to say you are not, but you also asked "Am I allowed to include images of Google Maps) - then the answer is still yes within your usage case - provided you attribute them to Google. If you look at this link it specifies that you are OK to use this in Reports and Presntations, Books which are not guidebooks and which have less then 5000 copies and presentations. If you are using them online, you need to use the imbedded versions (ie you can't just screenshot them - you need to link to them). If you are still unsure, you can contact streetview-academic@google.com to request specific permission.
Unfortunately the answer is a vague "it depends." Commercial versus non-commercial is not clearly defined in actual law, and is usually up to the specific license to define what it considers to be commercial use. If you were putting them on your business cards, then it's just being used for advertising and whether it's commercial use is a bit controversial. If the license explicitly prohibits the use of the work in advertising, then the license should explicitly mention that and should not rely on the term "commercial use" to cover or protect it. Creative Commons ran an excellent study on commercial versus noncommercial use back in 2009: Defining “Noncommercial” - A Study of How the Online Population Understands “Noncommercial Use” In the United States, for example, the Copyright Act does not define a copyright owner’s rights in terms of commercial or noncommercial use. Instead, copyright law sometimes attaches legal significance to whether a use is “commercial” or “noncommercial” or whether a user is deemed to be a commercial or noncommercial entity, However, rarely are the terms defined, and the law offers no specific guidance on how to differentiate between commercial and noncommercial uses or users of copyrighted works. If you were putting them on a business card you were making for the client, then that would be more clearly identified as commercial use because you're using it in something you are selling for a profit. What your client will be using them for is not relevant, because you're the one selling them to the client and you need to have the right to be able to do that.
No. Copyright protects expressions of ideas, not ideas themselves and not historical facts either. Conceivably, the persons written about might have a commercial right to use of their person or image, but the doctrine there is not copyright and the analysis is different.
All your work is yours. They've made it very clear it wasn't a work for hire, so it's yours. They can't copyright any of their ideas. You can't copyright an idea. Only specific creative elements authored by them and present in your work could be covered by copyright. You didn't use their block diagrams. I don't see how references to other sites to look at would constitute a creative element they authored. That said, you probably want to talk to a lawyer and get a written legal opinion that you can rely on.
I assume you are talking about United States federal copyright law. You can freely use any: material published before 1923 material published between 1923 and 1963 for which the copyright was not renewed material explicitly placed in the public domain material not copyrightable (such as any US government publication) material whose copyright has been abandoned (for example the author died with no heir)