As the lawsuit of Founder Electronic Co., Ltd sueing Procter & Gamble for infringeing the copyright of Founder's Qian style font of 飘柔 entered the ruling of the first instance, the copyright protection on Chinese fonts has aroused hot discussion. At a seminar on the IPR protection of Chinese fonts held on April 17, experts discussed the status and future of Chinese fonts. A week later, the Art and Design Magazine along with more than 100 senior designers and calligraphers signed a Recommendation on Protecting Chinese Fonts on the Computer. A campaign on the IPR protection of Chinese fonts was sweeping through the whole country.

Chinese fonts should be covered by Copyright Law

The experts attending the seminar of April 17 discussed the status of Chinese fonts and proposed a fundamental solution to the IPR protection of Chinese fonts.

Representatives from Chinese font enterprises elaborated the problems of piracy, unlawful use and slim income they were confronted with. A responsible officer of Founder Electronic said, "Font industry suffered badly from piracy and unlawful use. Founder had to spend huge mounts of funds in supporting its font business every year."

Chinese font businesses could only make ends meet. Such a situation might directly result from a lack of a healthy development environment. But fundamentally, it's the problem of  copyright protection on Chinese fonts.

Original fonts or font libraries as a kind of mental outcome should be endowed with IPR protection. Dean of IP Institute of Tongji University Tao Xinliang said, "Under the framework of China' current Copyright Law, original Chinese fonts should be protected as fine art works." Shen Rengan, consultant of the State Copyright Bureau and director of the Copyright Society of China, and other experts agreed on Tao Xinlian's viewpoint.　

Assistant Dean of IP School of Peking University Zhang Ping suggested that the Copyright Law should cover the font library, as a font could constitute a fine art work; all fonts could make up a font library and a font library itself was a software work or a compilation of data. Zhang held that at present the most operational solution was to incorporate Chinese fonts into the framework of China's Copyright Law, which was widely approved by experts. 　

On the stipulation of an individual law　

Shen Rengan viewed that "Printing fonts could be transferred to computer fonts via a computer program, which differs from calligraphy because the latter comes from random creation while the former follows standard specifications. Moreover, an author’s copyright protection spans the life of the author plus 50 years after his death. Such as a protection duration is not applicable to a font, as the font is just a simple deductive creation instead of an original creation."　

However, some experts still thought that only an individual law on the IPR protection of Chinese fonts was stipulated, could the problem confronted by Chinese fonts be solved fundamentally. Suppose that comes true, font designers' creative enthusiasm could be constantly enhanced and Chinese font industry would achieve a sound development.

Urgent requirement on protection

It's said that designing a Chinese font library was rather complicated. About 6,000 common Chinese characters should be designed in accordance with a determined font style and then should be transferred into a computer font library via computer programs. Such a process usually required three to four designers to work for years. If suffering piracy or infringement, the font library would hardly survive.

General Secretary of Chinese Information Processing Society of China Sun Le said, "If the IPR protection of Chinese font library witness no further progress, the America-made or Japan-made "Chinese Computer fonts" will occupy the Chinese market, which will be the sorrow of Chinese descent."

An expert expressed that the IPR protection of Chinese fonts was not only a problem of legislation but also a kind of duty and responsibility any Chinese descent should bear.

(Source:IPR in China)