RE: in the NEW YORK TIMES today, report of a USA patent for a methodto make the Arabic language easier to read/write/typeset

From: Ernest Cline (ernestcline@mindspring.com)
Date: Mon Mar 15 2004 - 13:55:16 EST

  • Next message: Frank Yung-Fong Tang: "Re: in the NEW YORK TIMES today, report of a USA patent for a method to make the Arabic language easier to read/write/typeset"

    > [Original Message]
    > From: Michael Everson <everson@evertype.com>
    >
    > In the NEW YORK TIMES today
    > comes a report of a USA patent for a new version of written Arabic
    > letters, designed to make them easier to read/write/typeset without
    > making them too different from traditional Arabic script:
    > http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/15/technology/15patent.html -
    >
    > The piece includes a photo of the new style.

    For those who are interested, a text-only version of the patents
    are available at the US Patent Office website [1]. The relevant
    patent numbers are 6,701,446 and D435,584.

    I'm not a lawyer, but a quick perusal makes me think that there
    is nothing that will affect Unicode per se. Font designers
    will have to not produce a font that embodies Mr. Abulhab's
    principles without his permission. Since his font departs
    radically from Arabic convention, I don't think that except
    for the possibility that this patent might be used a precedent
    for something really important that a patent might mess up that
    there is much to worry about here.

    Oh and by the way, the timing is probably due to the patent
    having been just issued on the 9th.

    [1] http://www.uspto.gov/



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