The author of Creampuff is Nick Curtis. At this thread he eluciated, that this font is a redraw from the Eclat-typeface from Doyald Young. So: It is NOT an illegal copy of Eclat, it is an unique digitization, therefore legal and free, too.

The original font was from Image Club and was called Eclat. The R in the Creampuff sample - means this was ripped off from Eclat Alternative.

Image Club fonts are now owned by International Typeface Company (ITC). I wrote them and had a discussion about this font.

This is where shades of gray come into play. Basically, since they are not producing the Alternate - Nick Curtis is, and it's up for grabs in a court if it's legal or not. They wouldn't say, but did write that if you use the Nick Curtis font commercially - he is the one that must give you permission to use it.

Are they setting us all up? Who knows. It is expensive to go after one person for one typeface...

Why would Nick (and other well established designers) willingly put himself into such position, i wonder?

Nick Curtis doesn't mind being in that position. One day, take a look at all "his" fonts...

Afterall, it takes a lot of money to go after one person for one font...

sounds like this is a case of one person and many fonts. is that money better spent or it is the "one person" part that is significant? when would you get more than one person though?

has anyone heard of anyone being actually, physically taken to court or they just shut down the sites that distribute those fonts?

YES

and worse... in NY in the beginning of the 1990s was a guy who went around as a computer consultant. He owned several of each program - and placed each one several times in different accounts. When the programs were to be updated, the manufacturers learned what he did - and he made the law books! Oh, and yes, he lost big time...

hmm... programs? you mean, software? fonts are kind of software, but any cases of font-related lawsuits?

im gonna google it now..

Everything he bought to give the first company - he gave the second, the third, etc. etc.

Fonts are considered software - it is all that is copyrighted on them - or so I've been informed.

Adobe and Quark had a field day.

so far i see agfa monotype loses lawsuit against bitstream. RedHat Linux settles with Agfa. adobe sues agfa.

all big on big

i am imressed with the overall moderate piracy level among general public, compared to those big companies' field days

on another note, how does the typographical community look upon designers like that? how can they be distributed and accepted, seemingly without any word, or am i just not reading? or am i supposed to be reading between the lines somewhere?

Originally there were guidelines.

One thing was Bitstream would not allow you to bring your fonts into a program like Illustrator and have you manipulate them - that was a big selling point for Adobe.

No one was allowed to give their fonts to a professional printer - URW changed that when they gave all of their end users permission to include their fonts with the job, so the results would be what they expected.

Much has changed over the years - we are now just down on thieves...

later - must run.

Check out QuarkXPress lawsuits if you can - you will probably find it - again, somewhere between 1990 and 1993.