Blizzard and The9 fined $212,000 for copyright infringement in China
by Amy Schley 
Mar 2nd 2010 at 2:30PM
As reported by JLM Pacific Epoch, the Beijing Municipal Higher People's Court has found that The9, Blizzard's onetime partner in China violated the copyrights of five Chinese fonts owned by Founder Technology Group. The9, Blizzard, and two other parties have been ordered to pay a fine of RMB 1.45 million, or approximately US$ 212,000. The9 has appealed the order to the People's Supreme Court. (Lovely place by the way. Just watch the steps.)
To recap, Blizzard had licensed World of Warcraft to The9 to distribute the game in China. Apparently, in localizing the game for China, The9 used five fonts for the Chinese text in game. However, these fonts are owned by Founder Technology Group, who sued The9 and Blizzard for copyright infringement in 2007, requesting damages of RMB 100M, or about US$ 13M. In September 2007, when The Burning Crusade was released in China, all of the Founder Technology Group fonts were replaced with fonts that Blizzard had permission to use "as a gesture of goodwill to the gaming community" "without any admission of liability."
Given the rocky relationship between The9 and Blizzard, it is likely that this fine will be yet another bone of contention between the companies and that responsibility for this fine may end up being decided in yet another court battle. Stay tuned!
Filed under: News items, The Lawbringer
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
jealouspirate Mar 2nd 2010 2:35PM
I hereby submit that having a copyright on a font is stupid.
It sounds like grade-school all over again. "Hey, that's how I do my "A"s, copycat!" /hairpull
Brian Mar 2nd 2010 2:38PM
I agree. I can't believe they sued The9 and Blizzard for $13 MILLION for for FONTS in 2007. Maybe that's why the default combat text is so ugly (imho).. because nobody else would want to use it. Just kidding!
Moonkinmaniac Mar 2nd 2010 2:49PM
Actually it takes A LOT of hard work and effort to make a typface or font as everyone calls them. Its not child's play. If you don't have the rights to it, keep your hands off it. Its just like anything else and artist can make only it has many many strict rules it has to take into account. Anyone who owns a business should know better, the 9 owe the money.
Alan Falcon Mar 2nd 2010 2:50PM
Well produced fonts are certainly worth the licensing fees required to use them.
(cutaia) Mar 2nd 2010 2:51PM
I always wanted to make a font out of my own handwriting.
But then people could type their ransom notes with it and I'd be in a lot of trouble.
Khremloc Mar 2nd 2010 3:18PM
Welcome to the world of business, Jealouspirate. :(
John Mar 2nd 2010 3:24PM
Just want to mention that these are Chinese fonts... you know... you need at least 6000 of them just to read newspaper, if you are covering the entire dictionary you'd need 50k characters. A team had to sit down, create clear fonts that can be resized and remain readable... Some font typefaces follow historic scripts and needs to be researched.
Oh ya, and it's 5 sets of them.
There's a lot of hard work and intellectual property in font typefaces... it is not in the same league as just someone copying 26 characters...
Reinhold Mar 2nd 2010 5:34PM
Copyrights... In CHINA??? ROFL
RetPallyJil Mar 2nd 2010 3:45PM
Jealouspirate, you strike me as the sort of basement-bound loser who has never created anything other than the occasional poo-poo.
Therefore, your ill-informed and ignorant opinion is utterly valueless.
Muse Mar 2nd 2010 5:20PM
John: 6000 for a newspaper includes tech and science-specific words, foreign word-transcriptions, corporation names, etc etc. Your average high school graduate will know about 3,5000 characters, which is well sufficient for reading a book and understanding the great majority of the words in the newspaper. In comparison, you need about 1000 words in English plus a few topic-specific ones to read the average wow.com article.
Verit Mar 2nd 2010 5:34PM
I actually used to work for Adobe (who makes a lot of fonts) there is actually a serious amount of work involved in designing, programming and developing fonts - yes fonts have code in them. Never mind the drivers and everything else to make sure they print properly, are spaced properly, ordinals and ligatures work properly etc etc.
So yes - you should have to pay for fonts and yes there should be infringement costs with abusing that, but that said - the9 already recalled the disks with the offending font in good faith - that has to count for something.
I think people use this "fonts for free" thing because type is all around them, but believe it or not someone did pay for all those (the fonts that come with Windows were made by ITC/Agfa and are used under license).
Sleutel Mar 2nd 2010 9:43PM
I would like to rock your Weltanschauung, if you please.
Kerning is "the process of adjusting white spacing in a proportional font." Wikipedia has a pretty good basic run-down on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning
Once you've learned about it, you will notice forevermore the kerning of what you're reading. Kerning is just one of the many things that go into designing a good font.
doit Mar 3rd 2010 12:14AM
I agree with all these comments, once you start working in some industry, regardless of the importance, you have an entirely different outlook on it than the average consumer.
Chris Mar 2nd 2010 2:38PM
$212,000 is -chump change- to the corporate behemoth that is Activision-Blizzard, but I guess some people aren't getting any bonuses this month :'
Ozmodius Mar 2nd 2010 2:40PM
This calls for some FONT JOKES!
-----
What kind of fonts do Campbell's Soup lovers prefer?
Anything condensed.
-----
1st Designer: “Wow, you always have so many fonts, where do you get them from?”
2nd Designer: “Oh they come from Monaco, Geneva, Chicago, New York… I get them delivered at various Times throughout the day…”
1st Designer: “By who?”
2nd Designer: “A Courier!”
(cutaia) Mar 2nd 2010 2:49PM
"Your typeface is sooooo fat."
"How fat is it?"
"Well, a typeface may come in fonts of many weights, from ultra-light to extra-bold or black; four to six weights are not unusual, and a few typefaces have as many as a dozen. Many typefaces for office, Web and non-professional use come with just a normal and a bold weight. If no bold weight is provided, many renderers (browsers, word processors, graphic and DTP programs) support faking a bolder font by rendering the outline a second time at an offset, or just smearing it slightly at a diagonal angle.
Having said that...yours is really fat."
I don't think I'm doing this right.
Socialcockroach Mar 2nd 2010 2:51PM
You are a real Comic.
Utakata Mar 2nd 2010 3:02PM
Where you trying to make an Impact, (cutaia)?
George Mar 2nd 2010 3:53PM
(cutaia)'s humour a tad oblique for my taste, but he's hinting at some puns that should be more boldly presented.
Kern to elaborate?
Erogroth Mar 2nd 2010 2:44PM
So whats with the picture in the link to some girls legs?