Could I &quot;free&quot; a proprietary font by printing all glyphs, tracing them with a pen, and scanning my copy? If I understand correctly, typefaces are not copyrightable in the US, only the digital colt files. If I want to make a libre version of a proprietary font, can I print out a document that says something like ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789@#$_&amp;-+()/*&quot;':;!?~`|^={}%[] then trace the glyphs with a pen, scan my traced copy, and create a new digital font file from the scan? (Ignore the fact that this will significantly degrade the quality.)
Yes, if you do not use the trademarked name. In the U.S. the graphical shape of fonts are not protected by copyright. See 37 CRF section 202.1 Typefaces are specifically excluded. Excluded are under (a) &quot;mere variations of typographic ornamentation,&quot; and (e) &quot;Typeface as typeface.&quot; The computer code that a font/typeface program uses to produce the shapes can be copyright. Importantly, fonts are protected by their trademarked names.
What you are missing is that the original copyright holder can give permission to make derivative works with strings attached. There is no automatic right to derive something from a copyrighted work. Those strings could include constraints on what you create in the process of making the derivative work. Yes it is a string limiting what you can do with something you own, but you would have been warned in the license and had the choice to start from scratch. People do create work-alike software with no copyright strings using two teams and a &quot;clean room&quot; design process. It is a lot harder than modifying something another person has developed. Also, law and someone's understanding of morals need not be aligned at all. And, in patent law, just creating something all by yourself from scratch does not give you ownership. If someone else did it first and got a patent you can't make the item you might think you own. IP law is complex and looking for &quot;fundamentals&quot; may not get you anywhere.
From your question(s), as well as your various comments, I understand you to have two general inquiries: 1. Is there any infringement of copyright laws if you use things like the titles of books, games, apps, names, address (and any other number of things) which you will then put into datasets that will be licensed for proprietary commercial purposes? You may freely put titles, names of people, places or things into datasets without fear that you are infringing on copyright or any other laws. That is clear. Copyright law does not protect names, titles, short phrases or expressions. Even if a name, title, or short phrase is novel or distinctive it cannot be protected by copyright. So, there is no point in discussing the doctrine of fair use in this context, because Fair Use is a defense, or a legal safe harbor that is merely an exception to copyright infringement allowing people to use a copyrighted works under specific circumstances. As I understand your intended endeavor, you will not be infringing on any copyrights to the extent that you are merely using factual data, like names of copyrighted things for the purpose of creating a dataset or an application to help access it. This is why I say you need not concern yourself with the test for Fair Use with regard to this issue. The Copyright Office states clearly, despite what people may think, that there are no exclusive rights in brief combinations of words such as: • Names of products or services • Names of businesses, organizations, or groups (including the names of performing groups) • Pseudonyms of individuals (including pen or stage names) • Titles of works • Catchwords, catchphrases, mottoes, slogans, or short advertising expressions • Listings of ingredients, as in recipes, labels, or formulas. When a recipe or formula is accompanied by an explanation or directions, the text directions may be copyrightable, but the recipe or formula itself remains uncopyrightable. Hence, these things are not registrable under a copyright. While something may be potentially attached to or included in copyrighted material, is not in and of itself subject to the protections of these laws. If it (whatever it is) cannot be registered for a copyright, it is not copyrightable. Because copyright registration/notices have been optional since 1989, when the U.S. attached itself to the Berne Convention, whereby copyright protection is automatic as soon as a work is “fixed in a tangible medium of expression” (written down, recorded, painted, etc.) it’s protected. No notice is required. Registration only becomes required for litigation or enforcement purposes. But this is really extraneous to your inquiry anyway, as far as it applies to the actual data. When you get into copying whole databases for your purpose, that analysis is different. 2. You want to "scrub" the internet for information that you intend to put into your proprietary datasets and use for commercial purposes, some or most of which is already in a database or some organized form, and you want to know if there is some sort of copyright or duty owned to the person who originally databased the materials? Since ideas, procedures, principles, discoveries, and devices are all specifically excluded from copyright protection, if you want to compile this type of information from the internet for the purpose of creating datasets, or searchable databases, this is permissible. That said, there are protections for existing databases under copyright law, provided under the concept of a "compilation copyright". A compilation copyright protects the collection and creative assembling of data or other materials. Compilation copyrights protect the collection and assembling of data or other materials, such that databases are generally protected by copyright law as compilations. Under the Copyright Act, a compilation is defined as a "collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship." 17. U.S.C. § 101. The preexisting materials or data may be protected by copyright since the selections of materials and the form they take in an existing database may be original enough to be subject to a copyright. However, the data itself is merely information and is not protectable. The Copyright Act specifically states that the copyright in a compilation extends only to the compilation itself, and not to the underlying materials or data. 17 U.S.C. § 103(b). As a result, "compilation copyrights" can't be used to place protection upon those things that are otherwise not protectable. In the case of Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a compilation work such as a database must contain a minimum level of creativity in order to be protectable under the Copyright Act. Feist makes clear that even a copyright protected database does not hold the right to prevent an individual from extracting factual data from the database (so long as you're not copying the entire database as a whole). If you take an already compiled and copyrighted dataset in its entirety, you must obtain a license for its use. However, if you are merely amassing great amounts of data to then put into your own dataset, that you are free to do. The big issue will be (and you seem to realize this) where you will amass this data from. Some websites have specific licenses in place that say you cannot use or rework their content. However, many times these websites simply throw these license requirements out there for users to see, despite the fact that they may not be (and some would argue) are not enforceable. The courts have heard arguments that "contracts" (the end-user licenses) that protect databases and information on websites is beyond the protection available through copyright law should be "preempted" by the Copyright Act itself. The preemption argument goes like this: Federal law controlling something that is subject to interstate commerce or use, should be controlled by the federal laws. So,since the federal government has enacted the Copyright Act to govern any protections to any original works, states should be (arguably are) prohibited from having contradictory laws. Because of the ability of a federal statute to preempt state law, and the fact that the Copyright Act at 17 U.S.C. § 301 sets forth specific preemptions, no state may create rights that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights provided under the Act. It is this concept of preemption that prevents copyright protection from varying depending upon the state where a work of authorship is created. Arguably, the same is true for the internet, and supposed contractual relationship created through licenses that dictates how non-copyrightable material may be used. In the case of ProCD, Incorporated v. Matthew Zeidenberg and Silken Mountain Web Services, Inc. the court examined whether an end-user of a CD ROM phone database was subject to the license, when they extracted a large portion of the database and made it available over the Internet. The database was almost the same as the type of data in the Feist case-The lower court rejected all copyright claims and found that the shrinkwrap license that controlled the end user's right to use the data was both unenforceable (as a shrink wrap license) and preempted by the Copyright Act. As a result, there was no relief available to the creator of the phone database and the end-user was free to extract the data and use it as he saw fit. However, on appeal this decision was reversed (7th circuit). The appellate court did acknowledge that the database (on the CD) was not original enough to be protected by copyright (finding no copyright infringement by the end-user); However, they did find the end-user was breach of contract, since the shrink-wrap license prohibited the end-user's conduct. What this tells us is that these licenses (on websites) may or may not be enforceable. While the 7th Circuit found a contract right pursuant to the license, despite the preemption argument, another appellate court that is more liberal may find otherwise. Also, this was a disk, not the internet, which is the "wild west" of information, largely unregulated and unlitigated as it pertains to the legality and enforceability of (some) regulations that do exist. License agreements for site use on the internet are everywhere. If you take a database from some site that has a license saying you cannot take their work and add to it, or whatever, and you do add it to other databases that are not licensed and then make your own dataset - chances are you are NOT going to be infringing on anyone's copyright. That said, you may be in breach of contract (the license) if they find out about it, and sue you (using it doesn't put you in breach; only getting sued and having a court determine you're in breach puts you in breach. It may be a distinction worth contemplation, but that is up to you). The safest, bet would be to get a license from them to rework the materials. If the material is generic enough, and will be changed enough, that you are creating your own new (copyrightable) work - I'm not sure how they would know you "scrubbed the data in contravention of their license agreement ( I have NO CLUE if there is coding or metadata attached to it such that it's identifiable in that way. I have not tech background and do not endorse taking what's not yours). But if they can and do know, they could cause problems for you. Lastly, I will just say that the internet is littered with sites that claim copyrights, or impose unenforceable licenses on material that is ripe for public use. Just because it says it's theirs does not make it so. The inverse is also true. Just because a site does not claim copyright to something, does not mean it is in the public domain. I would recommend either sticking to public domain/use sites for your scrubbing endeavors, or seeking permissions from the sites who impose licensing requirements. Short of that, I would recommend (as I already have) seeking an formal legal opinion to say that you are not imposing on anyone's copyrights (this could only be done once you showed an attorney every place you took material from, as well as what the material is), and that the licenses from sites with generalized information that may try to limit use, are unenforceable. I would do this before you invest a lot of time or money into something that is largely based on the accumulation of other peoples work product. I wish there was an answer certain, but there just isn't without seeing everything in the end.
united-states Under US copyright law blank forms generally do not have copyright protection, because they do not have sufficient originality to quslify for copyright under the doctrine of Feist vs Rural. According to the US Copyright Office Circular 33: &quot;Works Not Protected by Copyright&quot; (pages 3-4): Blank forms typically contain empty fields or lined spaces as well as words or short phrases that identify the content that should be recorded in each field or space. Blank forms that are designed for recording information and do not themselves convey information are uncopyrightable. Similarly, the ideas or principles behind a blank form, the systems or methods implemented by a form, or the form’s functional layout are not protected by copyright. A blank form may incorporate images or text that is sufficiently creative to be protected by copyright. For example, bank checks may be registered if they contain pictorial decoration that is sufficiently creative. Contracts, insurance policies, and other documents with “fill-in” spaces may also be registered if there is sufficient literary authorship that is not standard or functional. In all cases, the registration covers only the original textual or pictorial expression that the author contributed to the work, but does not cover the blank form or other uncopyrightable elements that the form may contain. A trademarekd name or logo could be used nominally to show compatibility with the trademarked product, such as: This character sheet is compatible with the game &quot;GreatRPG&quot;(tm) and is suitable for recording characters to be used in that game. However these sheets are not made, approved, authorized, or sponsored by Heartland Mages, who own the trademark &quot;GreatRPG&quot;. They are a product of &quot;MySheets&quot; which is in no way affiliated with Heartland Mages. Used with that sort of disclaimer, there will be no trademark infringement. And of course if the name and/or logo of the RPG is not used at all, there wiull also be no infringement. However, if the name of the game is used in advertising the sheets, or on the packaging of the sheets, it should be made clear to any consumer that the sheets are not authorized by the maker of the game. A disclaimer similar to the above serves this purpose. If reasonable people could be confused into thinking that the sheets came from the makers of the game, or were approved by the makers, there might be a valid action for trademark infringement.
pure functionality is not copyrightable Copyright does not protect purely functional things, it only can protect the execution as Brown Bag Software v Symantec Corp established back in 1992. In fact, even before that, Data East v Epyx established in 1988 that it takes the availability of the software to be copied to even get a case, but that was refined in Capcom v Data East in 1994: There are unprotectable elements, aka Scenes a Faire, things that are just standard and have to be done. A lever that pulls on a rope is strictly functional, that the lever is pink with orange stripes is not. A button with the label &quot;save&quot; on it has no artistic choice but a purely functional one and its presence, in general, can't be copyrighted as that is standard. Even standard placements like &quot;top left corner&quot; or &quot;bottom right corner&quot; for the button are just standard enough and make that part of the UI uncopyrightable. Indeed, even the idea of a Graphic User Interface is unprotectable as Apple v Microsoft (1994) held. But if you put that save button upside down on the left edge of the screen and only visible if you mouse over it, then you have shown artistic choice beyond the mere functionality - but also very bad UI/UX design. Code can be copyrighted. Computer code can be copyright protected, but you protect only those elements that are protectable in the first place. This means only elements that are not for example mandated by the sheer functionality of the underlying programming language. If the programming language mandates that all programs start with Program launch {variable variable variables} then that part is not copyrighted by you, but your choice of variable names can be. Code can be made from functionality requirements There was a famous SCOTUS case that had pretty much this question: Can a company dissect a software and then take the determined functionality of the whole software to their own programming team? Bowers v Baystate court held an Ethical Wall will not constitute infringement, if properly executed and the EULA doesn't prohibit it. Work for hire/Employees Now employers always get pretty much all the rights to a program's code anyway. If you are contracted from the outside, it might be work-for-hire and the contract might include such a transfer. In either case, there are no rights left for the hired person to sue over. Only if the contracted outside coder does not have a work-for-hire type work and there is no transfer clause, they do have rights in the work that they can sue over at all. But Work For Hire is a very complex topic on its own - and requires you to review your contracts and get a lawyer.
Ideas (methods of playing, game mechanics, strategy, goals) cannot be protected by copyright. But any part of a creative work can. So, no copying of drawings, patterns, images, sounds, or the element. I suppose copying the software code is not an issue here, but it can, obviously, also not be copied. And nothing in your game can look like someone's else trademark.
Yes, if the book was published in 1913, the copyright has expired. You can freely scan it in and publish it. But note you have NO copyright to the material. You didn't write it. Copyright law gives rights to the AUTHOR of a work. It doesn't matter how much effort you went to scanning it in and formatting it. Nothing in copyright law says that that gives you any rights. If you add anything creative of your own, you would own the copyright to the new material. Like if you drew new illustrations and added them to the book. Or if you included your own commentary. Or you added explanatory footnotes. That still wouldn't give you rights to the original text, but you would own the new material. But in the same vein, if the book was originally published in 1913, but the copy you have includes material added by a later editor, that later material might still be protected by copyright. Just a side thought, it occurs to me that if I was going to republish a public domain book, a good idea would be to add footnotes. If my footnotes appear on almost every page, then no one else could just take my electronic files and sell them himself. He'd have to go through page by page and purge out all the footnotes. Make it hard for someone to "borrow" your work and you might scare them off.
Arguably, no one owns the copyright in the general case. This is a similar case to a previous question I've answered. In short, the US has a statutory provision which bars infringing derivatives from gaining copyright. In this particular case, it's helpful to take a look at what the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had to say. While evaluating transformativeness, they did not declare Warhol's works to be derivatives, but left that possibility open and stated it was closer to being a derivative than transformative fair use: Nonetheless, although we do not conclude that the Prince Series works are necessarily derivative works as a matter of law, they are much closer to presenting the same work in a different form, that form being a high-contrast screenprint, than they are to being works that make a transformative use of the original. That Warhol's prints might have no copyright attached to them does not mean that anyone can use them though – they are still very much based on Goldsmith's photo and the underlying copyright to the original still belongs to Goldsmith. This could well mean that Goldsmith would be able to use the Warhol prints as if she owned its copyrights. Update: The Supreme Court has now affirmed, albeit on a narrow appeal from the Second Circuit Court of Appeal which dropped the issue that this question is about. Only the first fair use factor of transformativeness was challenged by the Andy Warhol Foundation (AWF). Additionally, and more important for this question is that only a single use was ruled on: the licensing of one of the prints by AWF for a 2016 magazine article reprint following Prince's death. This is because Goldsmith dropped the wider infringement claims. Here's where I realize I missed a key distinguishing fact in the case: There was indeed a narrow license for use of the photo for &quot;artist reference&quot; in relation to an article to be published in a 1984 Vanity Fair issue. In effect, due to the license, the (probable) derivative could be considered non-infringing1. Nevertheless, the court ruled that the use in the 2016 issue was not fair (given there was no license for use beyond the 1984 article, AWF had to rely on a fair use defense). In other words, the Warhol prints as a whole are not necessarily infringing derivatives2, rather, the specific use in the 2016 article was affirmed to be infringing. In particular, I'd like to highlight the following from court: The fair use provision, and the first factor in particular, requires an analysis of the specific “use” of a copyrighted work that is alleged to be “an infringement.” §107. The same copying may be fair when used for one purpose but not another. The full license text is not in any of the court decisions, so it's impossible for us to know for sure, but the portions that are quoted lead me to believe the license is vaguely worded. In particular, its in the realm of possibility that only the single derivative used on the 1984 article was licensed, but I would argue its reasonable to expect an artist to try multiple derivatives given a license for &quot;artist reference.&quot; This could potentially have been of some consequence as the print used in the 2016 article is not the same as the one used in the 1984 article. But since this case was initiated in district court by the AWF seeking declaratory judgment of non-infringement, my understanding of the matter is that once the case is passed back to the district court, it will enter in that declaration given Goldsmith dropped the wider infringement claims. Take this with a grain of salt, I'm not very well-versed in trial procedure.