RE: India seeks Rupee status symbol

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Mar 12 2009 - 08:57:23 CST

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    [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] De la part de Asmus Freytag
    > The rupee being used in different countries, it would be an
    > exceedingly bad idea to modify the glyph.

    The intent of the Indian government is certainly not to redefine the rupee
    used in other countries, but only to represent uniquemly the Indian one.

    : Consider the Euro symbol, it was designed to represent only the
    currency creatd by European institutions and emitted by the ECB under
    specific agreement by participating governments.

    : It was NOT designed for representing other currencies that could be
    named with Euro, like the "Euro WIR" which is specific to private
    Switzerland banks and that has a distinct ISO currency code, but cannot
    legally be represented with the official Euro symbol, even if there exists
    other international banks that may accept to perform transactions or
    compensate them in this alternate currency. If Swiss banks chose to emit
    Euro-WIR's using such symbol, they would be volating both the Swiss laws and
    the copyright on the Euro glyph symbol, unless they get a sepcific
    authorization from the copyright owner (sometihn that is very unlikely to
    occur).

    : The same will be true for the various "Euro bonds" emitted on
    financial markets by private organizations, and that have a value floatting
    independantly of the value of the Euro itself on the same markets.

    Given that the various currencies named "rupee" in English have their own
    ISO curency code and their own local names and their own value, if one wants
    to borrow the Indian rupee for representing them, he would make a false
    representation and this cannot be used for documents with legal binding,
    notably because the Indian government wants to keep the copyrighr assignment
    on the glyph and will not authorize other countries or central banks to use
    the symbol for their own minting or their printed currencies or the official
    documents and statistic reports about their distinct currencies.

    Those other countries will not be able to exhibit the new symbol on their
    minted coins or printed currencies, or even use it legally in a way that
    could provide a confusion between their own currencies and the Indian rupee
    without also violating an internationally recognized copyright assignment
    kept by the Indian government.

    Now, in the private market, there will be nobody to restrict such use, as
    long as all parties to some contract make it clear that there is no
    confusion possible between the various currencies, and explicity state the
    applicable currency unit for their transactions (for this issue, there also
    already exists standardized practices as well as commercial laws regulating
    the mandatory display of prices in advertizing, commerce, governmental
    public offers, or in electronic transactions that do not need any specific
    glyph but standard codes instead).



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