Nobody owns the copyrights on the designs; typeface designs are copyrightable under US law. However the names are trademarks, so you cannot revive the old face and use the ATF name without an agreement with whoever currently owns the rights to the name.

I think James meant to put a "not" in the second clause of his first sentence. Technically, the design of a typeface is not copyrightable in the US.

There are some circumstances under which a design is patentable. I believe some ATF faces received patents. But patents are much shorter lived than copyright and would have expired.

IIRC, for a while someone (ATF-Kingsley, I think it was) was maintaining the registration of the trademarks. But trademarks can lapse if the mark is abandoned. You would have to undertake a trademark search with the USPTO if you were thinking of retaining the original name.

-- K.

Thanks James and Kent. I've heard type designers reference these books quite often, it was my impression that since ATF no longer exists, the designs are fair game for digitizing. Other than the naming issue, it sounds like I was right about that. Anyone else care to chime it?

I am thinking the same as you, and also had doubts about digitizing some of them. I thought that if any issue, it would be naming them. Also, I like to actually find more information about type designers who worked for ATF. The books don't mention any designers names. I wonder anyone would know anything about that too. Well Chris, I did add more questions.

There is also the question of which faces are useful now - the faces in the ATF catalogs had a context. If you design outside of a context there is a danger the design ends up being rootless and therefore of marginal interest. There is one design in there I think is amazing. If I get the chance I may want to riff of of it one day....

I see Eben. Today's typography is stunning. But I think there are few things that can be done from an old face. Like starting with an imitation, which will then become something else, better, newer. I am kind of nostalgic.

Technically, the design of a typeface is not copyrightable in the US.

Lifted from the always accurate wikipedia:
"Although typeface design is not subject to copyright in the United States under the 1976 Copyright Act, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in Adobe Systems, Inc. and Emigre, Inc. v. Southern Software, Inc. and King (No. C95-20710 RMW, N.D. Cal. Jan. 30, 1998[1]) found that there was copyright in the placement of points on a computer font's outline, i.e., because a given outline can be expressed in myriad ways, a particular selection and placement of points has sufficient originality to qualify for copyright."

This would lead me to believe that as long as it hasn't been digitized, it should be okay, but maybe sources other than Wikipedia should be consulted...

Exactly Andrew. The 'must do' is just that, to make sure your result doesn't collide with others interests. I started searching about this subject, and that lead me to the Benton punchcutter, sintetized here, along with other subjects:

http://www.fonthaus.com/xheight/matthewcarter.cfm

As I said I have interest in the designer, but it appears that it was mass production, with credits to the sales people...

The IP rights to the ATF library were still very much owned and being protected in the early-to-mid nineties. At that time the person to contact regarding licensing was Mark A. Lester, Esq., in Los Angeles. This may still hold true although I don't have current contact information for him. If he's still practicing he's probably in the phone book.

The one thing I found most frustrating about trying to deal with them was the fact that they weren't really interested in licensing for a single font or single family. They were far more interested in licensing the entire package.

I also do not know which of their library of faces they claim IP rights to. The very old ones, in my mind at least, probably have no protection at all.

Thanks everyone for the input.

> As I said I have interest in the designer,

The prime force behind the design of most ATF faces was indeed Morris Fuller Benton, with some 200+ designs to his credit. The names of the numerous drawing office workers who did most of the drawing and production on those are shrouded in the mists of time.

ATF also published designs from outside designers. Mac McGrew gives attributions for many, many faces in his very thorough American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century. I recommend anyone look up any face they're contemplating reviving.

> The very old ones, in my mind at least, probably have no protection at all.

Let's assume for a moment, for the sake of argument, that typeface designs were copyrightable. In the U.S., works published before 1978 were afforded a maximum of 75 years protection if all renewals were made in a timely fashion. Anything published before 1933 would have entered the public domain by now. (One more year to go on any designs that were new to that 1934 catalog ;-)

So, from several angles, it seems that the legality is fairly clear. But this does not address any of moral considerations or intrinsic creative value of such an undertaking. If you haven't already done so, read and consider the various motives and approaches that John Downer categorizes in his Call It What It Is article.

But hey, Benguiat revived Benton's Souvenir for ITC in the ’70s and that was well-received -- for a while, right? On the other hand, look what happened after that ;-) As Eben said, context is important. Souvenir in the ATF 1923 catalog looks really nice, IMO. Souvenir in the ’70s seems cliche now. Souvenir these days would be downright dorky.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not slamming revivals. (Heck, I'm about to embark on one of my own -- well, more of a restoration than a revival, really.) I'm just pointing out some of the considerations that anyone should think through before doing so.

-- K.

I would think that a good person to ask about the designers would be Juliet Shen in Seattle. She's an expert on anything MFB and ATF.

For designers of faces prior to the birth of ATF, for those faces which were the products of all the older foundries you could refer to the individual Design Patents at the PTO. There weren't a large of number of designers and in some cases I believe the face was attributed to a single individual at a given foundry rather than the real designer.