Eagle Bold: rights and licensing
One of the type designs I am working on is a revival of Eagle Bold, an ATF typeface attributed to Morris Benton in 1933. It’s going to be a simple version and won’t be named Eagle to prevent confusion with revivals already on the market. I expect to have it ready to go by the end of the month and am trying to decide if I need to license anything from whomever owns the remainders of ATF.
From my point of view there is no need to license anything. I’m not planning to use the name Eagle, so there don’t appear to be any trademark issues. From what I can tell the original letters were designed for the NRA—a US Government agency—in 1933, which I think would put the rights into the public domain if copyrights had ever existed for type in the US, and Benton adapted Coiner’s design, so it doesn’t appear that I have any ethical obligation to work out a license with the current owners of ATF.
Thoughts?
3.Aug.2008 3.22pm
If you don’t mind my asking, why would you do Eagle if there are already two decent digitizations on the market?
3.Aug.2008 4.22pm
As a learning experience. Along with my own stuff I’m picking way at some classic designs just to learn how fonts go together. I’m not actually expecting to make any money out of this stuff ;)
3.Aug.2008 5.14pm
A strong tradition among both legitimate European and American type designers is to reinterpret an older design, and produce a new original work, free of royalty.
Here, however, the goal is an authentic revival, not an original design.
The difference here though is the fact that you are not calling it by the original name.
You add that as the design was created for the US goverment, the work then is public domain. This is likely the case, but all really depends upon the terms of the licensing agreement.
Nevertheless, much time has passed, over 50 years, and no design ownership exists in secular law (although in Jewish law, schus hamechaber or hayotzrim can exist for generations).
Furthermore, a revival or a replica of an older classical work has its own merit. As a result, you have certain intellectual property rights for 10 or 15 years at least.
3.Aug.2008 5.59pm
“From what I can tell the original letters were designed for the NRA—a US Government agency—in 1933, which I think would put the rights into the public domain if copyrights had ever existed for type in the US...”
Not necessarily true. Our government has a funny way of looking at things sometimes. In the late 60s or early 70s, for instance, they copyrighted every US postage stamp design dating all the way back to 1847.
It isn’t too likely that they would raise much of a fuss about it though, so go for it.
3.Aug.2008 7.23pm
Should be safe to revive something James... then you don’t have to worry about originality or the pirate sites ; )
Michael
3.Aug.2008 7.37pm
Hey James,
Do you have a PDF or screenshot that we could look at?
—K
3.Aug.2008 9.30pm
Here it is:
At this point I need to loosen up the spacing and find the version of the font that had some kerning done—I may have saved over it. I’m also debating how to handle some of the pointy terminals that don’t come to a hard point in my metal specimen. I think I’ll switch them over sharp points as Coiner drew them. I might head over to the Library of Congress and sift through their NRA ephemera for more ideas to bring over from the hand-lettered stuff.
Because I see this as having little commercial value my plan is to release it (and my Fry’s) under a Creative Commons like license. This will at least make it useful as a web font once the @font-face train pulls into some more stations, and hopefully be a decent self-promotion. What I want is a license that allows designers to use it without limits, but does not allow redistribution for profit.