NBC sued over type licensing
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- knars
http://cityfile.com/dailyfile/75…
Someone done messed up!
- utopian0
WTF's?
- ninjasavant0
"In the meantime, you can look over the lawsuit—which was filed in Times New Roman, by the way—and exhibits below."
- vaxorcist0
Argh, I do get this, but the font company may be messing up the lives of alot of designers, as it may make some clients skittish about using fonts other than rather boring ones... I can see a "mindset gap" between designers who cherish the identity of a signature, unique font for a certain brand, and a client who says "whatever happens, don't screw us up like that" ... especially as in-house client staff may really not get the whole idea of font licensing....
- VectorMasked0
Good for FB.
- utopian0
On the brighter side of things, it looks like NBC will have plenty of design job openings soon... after they fire the entire creative team!
- +hektor911
- party time. lol.akrokdesign
- Not true. They took a 500 Million Dollar Budget Cut at the beginning of the year. I went with that.jteore
- moural0
While I understand the argument here, I always get a kick out of the language used in legal documents like this. It's like the crap I forced into papers during high school just to meet the page requirements.
How can you read that stuff with a straight face?
- Invalid0
apologies if this is a silly queastion, but how did they know the font had been installed on several computers as apposed to one?
- good quest'benfal99
- common sense mostly, it takes a whole team to do all the work that was done... probably not sharing a comp.Sugary
- yep. Doubt a lone individual did all that work. If this dude does indeed exists, I'd like to hire him.VectorMasked
- font spies?TheBlueOne
- scarabin0
ruh roh
- FredMcWoozy0
I am a little conflicted over this, Sue for $2,000,000 for a $40 type face? Why not just contact NBC and say hey, if you use the font with more then one designer you need to pay extra an extra license. I guess everyone wants to get rich in court these days.
^ And ya had did they know they installed it on more then once machine? Can you embedd trackers or bots in fonts to tell you the ip of the machine its being used on?
- But you could say NBC made millions from the result of that "$40" font. Therefore NBC undeservedly earned that.VectorMasked
- Invalid0
yeah it's either some sort of tracking software which i hope they mention in the license agreement, because that would deter me from trusting them, or it's what Sugary and Vector said, how they just assuemd one person couldn't do all that work. in which case i'd think the argument wouldn't be string enough in a court. sure it sounds like a lot of work and it would be impossible, but who are they to judge?
OR, what if the type was layed out by one guy, then passed as a vector shape to the layout guys.
OR, if does have tracking software, how will the software dtermine the difference between the font being stored on multiple machines as apposed to one guy who got a new machine and copied his fonts across.
whhhooooooo knoooooooows!?
- string = strong
Invalid - Some string = strong. I find the thinner stuff not so strong, but I see your argument.Zenith_Kudos
- string = strong
- Invalid0
i think i might put my hand up to be the defence lawyer...
OBJECTION!
- akrokdesign0
seams like a clear case for FB.
- formed0
Wouldn't it be the IT guy that screwed up? Could have been a 'hey, you there, get the creative dept. up to date with all current software". Obviously, someone screwed up and you can't imagine they don't have a policy for these types of things.
If it was some intern IT guy, I'd have a hard time believing a court would grant that kind of money with no proof of any damages. You can't just sue for a "I want to retire" sum of money with no basis.
Speaking of damages, they will need to sue for a lot of money as this will cause smaller clients to look elsewhere for fonts.
- era4O40
Oops. We've purchased all the fonts we've used for our work w/ NBC. :)
- era4O40
The Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" logo was designed by Number 17
http://www.number17.com/According to this site:
http://www.latenightwithjimmyfal…
- GeorgesII0
* waits until Adobe discovers NBC only bought one license of Creative suit
- hahaukit
- +1Invalid
- +2 HAHAHakrokdesign
- +3 I like to go along with crowdsTheBlueOne
- shitehawke0
Thats pretty bad, but to be fair I wanted to purchase a Font Bureau font for work I was doing a few months back. I really wanted to use but due to the licensing I had to contact them rather than just buy through the website. After several emails I still haven't heard from them so I had to find a similar face and buy from a different foundry.
- Projectile0
FB are sure as dammit making it hard for us now.. any time we use a new typeface in the soft, faded, blurred background of something or at 8pt in the bottom corner, we're going to have to trawl through 20 emails of agreements and 50 pages of t's and c's and find out who has paid what to whom.. this sucks!!
I'm geting really sick of the suing culture! Sure NBC were kinda in the wrong there, but now every project manager is going to be so shite scared of this happening to them/ their client that we'll all be told "just use a free font like arial"
- baseline_shift0
I think FB is really trying to set a new precedent as far as font usage is concerned. Moving into an increasingly digital era, the use of designer typefaces is becoming more important.
The way i see it (and id bet FB as well) is that with the hundreds of lawyers employed by NBC, they didnt have one who understood font licensing. A broadcasting corporation of that size, using visual resources of all varieties should be aware of these types of licenses. They sure as hell pay for photos and stock footage.
More than just the money they are trying to collect with this lawsuit, they are trying to raise awareness about the use of type, and how they dont just materialize on the internet. Id bet most people in broadcasting dont even understand this. Id also bet that all the other major networks are scrambling to check their font licenses right now.
- "increasingly digital era" yeah cos HTML can use so many fontsBIGGESTDOGINTHEWORLD
- digital ≠ html.baseline_shift