The Euro symbol could not have been encoded if it did not allow derivative designs or even only the original design, whose copyright still remains to the EC ; this would have contradicted the policy of Unicode which is that it does not encode glyphs but only abstract characters.
Anyway there was also the need to assert that the original design (reproduced in the Unicode and ISO 10646 charts) was licenced legally. The licence comes in fact from a European decision entered into law, that legalized the use of the logo by anyone, for any purpose, in any publication, including all derivatives. The copyright is still here on the original design, but it has been freed from almost all licencing requirements, by not even requiring to attribute the author or the copyright owner for the original design. The copyright remains because it just forbids anyone else from claiming that he owns the design of the original logo, and claiming royaltees on its usage or claiming author's attributions or fame on it. And this may explain why the EC did NOT enforce the requirement of the Euro symbol to keep the original design only. In fact I think that this is even a necessary condition for a glyph to be encoded as a character, that derived works MUST be allowed. and in that case, this gives more sense about why Unicode insists that the "representative glyphs" are NOT enforced as being unique for any given encoded character. So encoding a new character is not really a big problem, it can be made very easily and anticipated, but noone should assume that this can be done and used immediately by implementing it in fonts, BEFORE it has effectiveley been included in the coordinated universal character set. And I think this will only happen after the voting comities have formally approved the inclusion of the character in the universal repertoire, after verifying that the glyph was freed from licencing requirements (even if its copyright remains on the original glyph design). In other words, the Indian Rupiah will be encoded but will also allow variations of glyphs. And then the Indian government will not be able to forbid these derivations. But if it can, then the character MUST NOT be encoded. A mere "encouragement" sent to anyone to use the glyph is not a sufficient condition for the encoding. There must exist legal acts that make this use and the use of derivatives perfectly legal. And this must be true for any unfree logo or glyph or any other graphical design, that MUST NOT be encoded before its licencing has been liberalized in a way that does not even require giving author's attribution or the name of the copyright owner on the design. There must not be any possible counter-attack based on IP rights violation, just because the character has been used later in any publication. Such attack is still possible on the Windows logo or on the Apple logo, and that's why they can't and must not be encoded in the UCS as abstract characters. So yes the *original* Euro symbol design is a logo with strict definitions and a clear copyright still aplicable to it, but its derivatives are not (or they will be different logos with other additional copyrights applicable to them). And both of them (except the derivatives that have not also been freed) are liberalized in their usage by anyone for any purpose. At least the fact that the original design is liberalized allows countless varations without being bound to the terms of other licencing terms claimed in one of these derivatives. All derivatives just have to be based on the original and liberalized design or the design that appears within the Unicode and ISO 10646 charts. (Note that ONLY the glyph design that appears in these charts can be reproduced to create derivatives in fonts. Their numeric form as part of the document containing them is not free and cannot be directly imported to create a font). Philippe. "Erkki I Kolehmainen" <[email protected]> wrote: > > The euro sign was originally defined in a manner similar to a strict logo. > The European Commission, however, very soon realized that it had to > be adjusted to the font style in order to be at all usable in any text. Thus, > it is wrong to say that they did try to claim that it was a logo. > > Sincerely, Erkki I. Kolehmainen > > Doug Ewell wrote: > > > > Philippe Verdy <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote: > > > > > The final vote for approving the representative glyph will require > > > first getting an agreement with the Indian governement that still owns > > > the exclusive design, until it approves its use by the public and > > > implementation in fonts and keyboard layouts, > > > ... > > > The final vote will still be needed (and the formal authorization / > > > open licencing from India for what is still *their* glyph) > > > > This is the second time I have read this. Is it true? I know the > > European authorities tried to claim that the Euro sign was a logo, and > > had to remain unchanged regardless of the font style, and were unable to > > enforce that. > > > > Things that are truly logos, with IP rights owned by someone else, > > aren't supposed to be encoded. I'm sure that's not what the Indian > > government had in mind.
