Jacksonville Jaguars rumored for new uniforms in 2018

[WSU151]

59 minutes ago, DeFrank said:

When was the last time a team really revamped their uniforms and kept a standard block font? Lions? Bucs?

 

2009 49ers, 2011 Bills. 

[andrewharrington]

On 2/13/2018 at 12:56 PM, Ice_Cap said:

Block number fonts aren’t any easier or harder to counterfeit than any other sort of number font. 

 

The reason the NFL avoids standard block is because standard block can’t be trademarked. The NFL wants their teams to own everything about their looks, down to the number fonts. 

 

That’s why the Cardinals and the pre-redesign Vikings have/had fonts that are/were essentially block, but tweaked just enough for the teams to trademark them. 

 

Even then though? The NFL still uses and sells throwbacks that use block fonts. 

Hell, the Bills’ last redesign used standard block font. Meaning that even in an era when the NFL wants all new unis to have proprietary fonts? Teams will still go with block if that’s what they really want to do.

 

You can’t trademark the design of a typeface. The best you can do is pay the designer for exclusivity, but even that only prohibits the designer from providing or selling it to others. Anyone else can knock it off.

 

Custom fonts are an anti-counterfeit measure to a degree. It’s easier to “guess” what block numbers look like if you know they’re block, and people are probably less likely to notice a rogue block number because many assume they’re all the same or close enough. Custom numbers at least make the counterfeiters work to research and recreate them, but most people wouldn’t be able to spot the real ones from the fakes. Plus there are so many photos available nowadays that research is easy.

 

The bigger benefit of custom numbers is that it gives you the opportunity to build out a more unique, unified aesthetic for your brand outside the uniform.

[JagAaron33]

Uni Watch is holding a Jags redesign contest: https://uni-watch.com/2018/02/15/a-new-to-me-form-of-nob-arching/

[BBTV]

4 hours ago, andrewharrington said:

 

You can’t trademark the design of a typeface. The best you can do is pay the designer for exclusivity, but even that only prohibits the designer from providing or selling it to others. Anyone else can knock it off.

 

Custom fonts are an anti-counterfeit measure to a degree. It’s easier to “guess” what block numbers look like if you know they’re block, and people are probably less likely to notice a rogue block number because many assume they’re all the same or close enough. Custom numbers at least make the counterfeiters work to research and recreate them, but most people wouldn’t be able to spot the real ones from the fakes. Plus there are so many photos available nowadays that research is easy.

 

The bigger benefit of custom numbers is that it gives you the opportunity to build out a more unique, unified aesthetic for your brand outside the uniform.

 

Then why are there fonts that require payment and licenses to use commercially if they can’t be protected? Wouldn’t they be considered proprietary to the team / league and covered by the same rules?

[Gothamite]

2 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

Then why are there fonts that require payment and licenses to use commercially if they can’t be protected? Wouldn’t they be considered proprietary to the team / league and covered by the same rules?

 

I should think so.  Same reason that the NFL fonts had to be taken down.

[MDGP]

2 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

Then why are there fonts that require payment and licenses to use commercially if they can’t be protected? Wouldn’t they be considered proprietary to the team / league and covered by the same rules?

 

The font itself can't be protected, but the underlying font software does have copyright protection. So, if you wanted to hand draw or hand cut the fonts, you could do that. Because the software is copyrightable, an owner of a font can protect it by selling, or as Gothamite noted, forcing takedowns.

[oldschoolvikings]

dp

[oldschoolvikings]

8 hours ago, andrewharrington said:

 

You can’t trademark the design of a typeface. The best you can do is pay the designer for exclusivity, but even that only prohibits the designer from providing or selling it to others. Anyone else can knock it off.

 

 

Didn't we have a member who was posting versions of team's fonts in the concepts section, and received a notice that he had better remove them or face litigation?  (Rhetorical  question, because yes... we did.)

[andrewharrington]

48 minutes ago, oldschoolvikings said:

 

Didn't we have a member who was posting versions of team's fonts in the concepts section, and received a notice that he had better remove them or face litigation?  (Rhetorical  question, because yes... we did.)

 

4 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

Then why are there fonts that require payment and licenses to use commercially if they can’t be protected? Wouldn’t they be considered proprietary to the team / league and covered by the same rules?

 

The lack of protection for the design of letterforms is specifically mentioned the Copyright Act of 1976. The prevailing view in U.S. law (some countries do provide protections for this in the form of design patents) is that letterforms “are utilitarian objects whose public utility outweighs any private interest in protecting their creative elements.”

 

The fonts themselves are software, though, and there are protections offered to those. This is why they are licensed and not sold (which would imply that you own the font once you pay for it). If you are caught using a font without a license to use it (or if you are using it in a way that breaks the terms of the license), you can be sued. Typeface names can also be protected.

 

Without knowing the full story on NFL Fonts Guy, I’d guess he either found himself in a grey area or a lose-lose situation that wasn’t worth pursuing. Was he presenting these fonts as NFL fonts? Was he calling them by specific team names? The league obviously has a vested interest in protecting (or attempting to protect) its teams’ assets, whether or not they have a solid legal foot to stand on, but even associating the work to the league or to certain teams could have been the difference between winning and losing that judgment had it gone to court. It’s improbably difficult for an individual to last long enough to defend himself, let alone get a judgment against a giant corporation, especially if it’s in that grey area where the individual is the accused and the motives are questionable at best.

 

The deck is kind of stacked against NFL Fonts Guy in that situation, however, there is no law stopping someone from drawing a typeface that mimics another and calling it something else. 

[oldschoolvikings]

43 minutes ago, andrewharrington said:

 

 

The lack of protection for the design of letterforms is specifically mentioned the Copyright Act of 1976. The prevailing view in U.S. law (some countries do provide protections for this in the form of design patents) is that letterforms “are utilitarian objects whose public utility outweighs any private interest in protecting their creative elements.”

 

The fonts themselves are software, though, and there are protections offered to those. This is why they are licensed and not sold (which would imply that you own the font once you pay for it). If you are caught using a font without a license to use it (or if you are using it in a way that breaks the terms of the license), you can be sued. Typeface names can also be protected.

 

Without knowing the full story on NFL Fonts Guy, I’d guess he either found himself in a grey area or a lose-lose situation that wasn’t worth pursuing. Was he presenting these fonts as NFL fonts? Was he calling them by specific team names? The league obviously has a vested interest in protecting (or attempting to protect) its teams’ assets, whether or not they have a solid legal foot to stand on, but even associating the work to the league or to certain teams could have been the difference between winning and losing that judgment had it gone to court. It’s improbably difficult for an individual to last long enough to defend himself, let alone get a judgment against a giant corporation, especially if it’s in that grey area where the individual is the accused and the motives are questionable at best.

 

The deck is kind of stacked against NFL Fonts Guy in that situation, however, there is no law stopping someone from drawing a typeface that mimics another and calling it something else. 

 

If I remember correctly, "NFL Fonts Guy" (yes, I remember his screen name, but I'm just being safe in case he'd prefer to leave the whole incident in the past) was doing pretty much dead-on versions of various sports fonts... not just NFL but NBA, MLB, and dozens of colleges.  He didn't attach the actual team name, but gave it sort of a clever name alluding to a secondary nickname, or hometown that left little doubt where it came from.

As you explain the copywrite laws above (and I have no reason to doubt you, you seem to know much more about it than I do), it would seem to me that he should've been OK. But one day, the thread just disappeared, and (again, IIRC) he implied he was asked to remove them under what definitely seemed to be a threat.  

[WBeltz]

I would think it would be really cool to see a Navy/VT style helmet from Jacksonville, just swap white with black and the orange with gold and the maroon with teal.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="es" dir="ltr">9.12.15 vs Furman<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Hokies?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Hokies</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WhiteEffect?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WhiteEffect</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MilitaryAppreciationDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MilitaryAppreciationDay</a> <a href="http://t.co/btz9NHNqv1">pic.twitter.com/btz9NHNqv1</a></p>&mdash; HokiesFB ? (@HokiesFB) <a href="https://twitter.com/HokiesFB/status/592046914469810177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 25, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 

[DustDevil61]

On 2/14/2018 at 7:41 AM, JagAaron33 said:

Don't have time to search Tweets first thing in the morning at work! Hahahaha

 

I found it tho!

 

 

Plz no.

[WSU151]

1 hour ago, WBeltz said:

I would think it would be really cool to see a Navy/VT style helmet from Jacksonville, just swap white with black and the orange with gold and the maroon with teal.

 

If they could do alternate helmets, I think that'd be a cool way to do one, mainly as a tribute to the Naval base. But I'm hoping for a regular glossy all-black helmet.

[Sec19Row53]

8 minutes ago, TSHARE18 said:

The helmets are black in the Seahawks finish. 

If so, it's better than matte, but worse than gloss.

 

IMO - everything on this board is always IMO

[JQK]

Matte is the way to go for the Jags.

[TSHARE18]

5 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:

If so, it's better than matte, but worse than gloss.

 

IMO - everything on this board is always IMO

And much better than the awful helmet they had before. 

[andrewharrington]

5 hours ago, oldschoolvikings said:

 

If I remember correctly, "NFL Fonts Guy" (yes, I remember his screen name, but I'm just being safe in case he'd prefer to leave the whole incident in the past) was doing pretty much dead-on versions of various sports fonts... not just NFL but NBA, MLB, and dozens of colleges.  He didn't attach the actual team name, but gave it sort of a clever name alluding to a secondary nickname, or hometown that left little doubt where it came from.

As you explain the copywrite laws above (and I have no reason to doubt you, you seem to know much more about it than I do), it would seem to me that he should've been OK. But one day, the thread just disappeared, and (again, IIRC) he implied he was asked to remove them under what definitely seemed to be a threat.  

 

Based on your synopsis, there's a pretty decent chance he could have "won" a court judgment, but at what cost? Whether the claim is valid or not, when a multi-billion dollar entity serves you a cease and desist, you're kind of stuck. Because you didn't file the claim, if you "win" your best outcome is what, you get to keep your fonts available for download? That's what I was getting at when I mentioned a lose-lose situation. Unless you're the one suing the big corporation, there's not much for you to gain (assuming these fonts were not his livelihood).

 

The law sucks for type designers who create great original typefaces. On the other hand, it keeps type design "open source" in a way, so if I want to make my own improved version of Helvetica or Futura, I am free do that. Granting protection to the design of letterforms would create as many issues as it would solve, in my opinion (while I don't know how often fonts are completely ripped off, I'd guess piracy is a much much bigger issue for type designers).

[Teal]

So the new set will be revealed a day before the draft, is that correct?

[Gr3g3]

58 minutes ago, Teal said:

So the new set will be revealed a day before the draft, is that correct?

 

Where did you hear that?

[panthers_2012]

8 minutes ago, Gr3g3 said:

 

Where did you hear that?

That's usually how it is in the NFL. They reveal the uniforms right before the draft.