Copyright protection of Chinese characters: which fonts can be used for free?

Black Song Fang Kai meets the needs of 90% users. China's fonts developed from Oracle Bone Inscriptions to inscriptions on bronze, to seal script, to official script and regular script, running script and cursive script. This is a long process of cultural inheritance. "People have some misunderstandings about the use of Chinese characters. Some people think that Chinese characters have existed for thousands of years, and have already passed the copyright protection period, so they can be used at will. Actually, this is not the case. " At the "China Font Intellectual Property Protection Seminar" held recently, Zhang Jianguo, general manager of Founder Electronic Font Division, who has been engaged in font research and development, said, "We divide fonts into several categories, one is the words left by our ancestors, such as the extensive use of italics in inscriptions of past dynasties, which is actually copyrighted, but the copyright period has passed and everyone can use it; The second type is changed on the basis of public fonts, which is relatively large and meets the copyright requirements, so this type should be protected as an artistic font; The third category is from scratch in history and meets the requirements of copyright uniqueness protection, so it should be protected. " So for ordinary people, will it be affected by the protection of font rights and interests? Zhang Jianguo believes that "Black Song Fang Kai's four fonts are used most frequently in computers, and operating system manufacturers and some font manufacturers have also purchased these basic fonts, so ordinary people can use them with confidence, and these four fonts meet more than 90% of ordinary people's demand for characters. For those individual users who want to use richer fonts, they can buy other fonts. However, they can only be used for writing and printing on one computer, and cannot be used for large-scale commercial publishing. " * * * Enjoy Chinese characters that are not equal to fonts. At present, there are more than 1 1,000 Chinese font copyrights in Japan, while there are only 1 1,000 in China. Therefore, only by fully combining the traditional culture of China, which has a history of thousands of years, with the diversified expression of modern information society can we inherit Chinese characters better. However, under the existing laws in China, there are no laws and regulations specifically for fonts. "According to the general norms of China's Copyright Law, we protect fonts and characters as works of art," Tao Xinliang, dean of the Intellectual Property College of Tongji University, pointed out. "The eighth paragraph of Article 10 of China's Copyright Law clearly stipulates that works of art refer to plane or three-dimensional plastic arts that form aesthetic meanings by lines, colors or other means. For users of Chinese characters, what we can enjoy is Chinese characters, not Chinese fonts. " Weiguang Wu, an associate professor at Tsinghua University Law School, has a sharper view on the intellectual property rights of Chinese characters. He believes that the copyright law aims to protect the scarcity of works, and the scarce fonts themselves contain potential market value. If the law does not protect fonts, copyright transactions cannot be carried out and commercial value cannot be generated. In fact, cultural creativity and innovation are stifled in disguise. Cultural and Creative Industries Need to Protect Basic Creativity When Coca-Cola first entered China, all its trademarks used the most traditional italics, but its global competitor Pepsi-Cola always used bold and fashionable innovative fonts, which reflected the modern style. In order to compete with Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola specially spent 500,000 yuan, specially invited famous Hong Kong designers to plan all-round trademarks and fonts for the Asian market, and spent 1 100 million yuan to promote a new brand image, which established a good brand image in the hearts of young people. Zhang Ping, executive vice president of Peking University Intellectual Property Research Institute, said that some experts believe that fonts should not be protected, which is contrary to the cultural and creative industries and copyright trade that we advocate today. If we don't protect the basic creative achievements of cultural and creative industries, we can't talk about trading and development. Whether as words or software, fonts should be protected. Intellectual property is infiltrating into the corner of life. "There is a market demand for the font industry in China, and it should be better protected by the system." Zhang Ping, a professor at Peking University Intellectual Property Institute, believes that some people worry that protecting fonts will lead to abuse of rights and constitute a monopoly. In fact, monopoly is a state, which is a fact. Now it's just an imagination and worry. If we kill the font industry with imaginary worries, it will deviate from the goal of intellectual property protection in China. The copyright protection of Chinese characters is actually a new problem in the field of intellectual property in China. Although experts attending the meeting generally believe that the copyright of Chinese characters should be further protected, there are still different voices that Chinese characters, as the public heritage of the Chinese nation and even human civilization, are the main carrier of information transmission and a tool with practical value. At present, although our country has defined the fonts such as Book Song, Imitation Song, Bold and Italic as free fonts in the public domain, it should be noted that the fonts are only mechanical works completed by technical means and cannot produce new original deductive works. The font protection of fonts should be kept at an appropriate limit, so as not to affect the normal play of basic functions of characters for thousands of years, and not to let users fall into the shadow of payment.