Thanks to all font-friends out there for their encouraging words and kind assistance!
Finally - a result! The Lino lawyers accepted a declaration made by my lawyer. The brief summary: I will not use species 335348 on my web-pages in context with font-downloads. They do not insist on profit statistics, probably they understood there aren't any. And I don't have to pay any of their charges.
Anyway, I am not too happy about it.
Commerce remains the holy cow of our days and I wouldn't really be surprised about an addition to the human rights charta that everybody's right to make profit is sacrosanct.
Lawyers are back from easter holiday and sent a short note that they don't accept the declaration in my own words, I have to sign their official document until april, 24th. As I can't fulfill their demands, I contacted Bruno Steinert from Linotype to clarify the situation with his lawyers. And I decided to get a lawyer myself. Will keep you posted here.
One of our freeware designers has withdrawn her fonts from a Linotype shareware compilation CD (to be released this year) and I want to say thanks for that great support.
I am wondering if Eric de Berranger has ever been criminalized for Helwissa...
Recently I received a registered letter from Lino's lawyers in Munich - I am accused to offer species 335348 for download on typOasis. A long explanation was attached that species 335348 is a registered trademark and a copyrighted / protected font-name. They told me I was violating this registered trademark. Ah! That was the moment I got the message - they were referring to HelvAssim, my funny little creation of a standard font assimilated by Borg! I called them immed and learned, the trouble is not caused by the font but the word species 335348 in the presentation graphic. This honorable word is protected and must not be used in displays of other fonts.
They want me to send a fax with a "Unterlassungserklaerung" (=declaration not to use species 335348 any more in connection with font distribution) in case of using it I'd have to pay DM 10,000. They want statistics how many downloads were done and how much banner clicks were made thanks to species 335348. They will sue me for financial damage as soon as they have the related information. The basic sum in dispute is DM 50,000. Besides, I should pay immed DM 1,200 for the lawyers.
I really tried to explain that nobody with eyes and brain could seriously mix up HelvAssim and species 335348, with the effect, that they promised to send a modified Unterlassungserklaerung - with the charges of DM 1,200 being removed.
And so they did. Next day I received the modified thing. Before I am going to sign anything that will probably cause costs of DM 10,000 I insist to contact a lawyer myself. I wrote them a letter and tried to explain again the meaning of moorstation. org - a non profit domain can't give them any banner statistics, right?
That's the status on april 1st, 2001. I am not kidding!