This is my open letter to MistaleFur about her celtic knot font. Feel free to comment either to me or to her.

Dear MistakeFur,

I suppose at this point that you probably thought that I had given up and gone away. Well, I'm sorry but that is never going to happen. This is just too important to me, as you will understand better as you read this. I sincerely ask that you read this with an open mind and an open heart.

When you didn't hear back from me, I suppose you thought you had convinced me that you were right. Actually, you are not correct about the legalities of this issue, and the only reason you didn't hear from me sooner is that I have been overwhelmed helping my wife fight for her life and trying to take care of her. I told you a year ago that she was very sick from cancer and that you were taking away our income by giving away "your" version of my font. Did that not mean anything to you? Frankly, I was shocked at the callousness of your reply, but I am trying to believe that you are in fact a decent and reasonable human being and that we can resolve this without going to court.

Your answer was not what I expected from an "artist". I expected to find a kindred spirit who would understand my position and do the right thing. I am still hoping for that to be the case. Perhaps if I explain my situation a little more fully you will understand and have a change of heart.

I have thought long and hard about this, trying to understand you and your position (have you tried to understand my position?). Here is what I have concluded and what I want you to understand about this problem.

You were probably annoyed by my initial communication. You probably thought: "Who is this person and why does he think that he has the right to affect my life?" Well, let me tell you who I am and just a little about me, and how you are affecting my life.

I am just a guy who is trying to make it through a difficult time. A little while before my last email, my wife Laurie (the kindest and sweetest person I have ever known) started having a lot of pain in her right shoulder. She and I had been taking care of her father for the last 5 years. He has Alzheimer’s disease. He was always one of the most intelligent people that I had ever met. He was scrupulously honest, generous to a fault, incredibly organized, infinitely patient and brilliant. Alzheimer’s Disease took all of that away, and Laurie had a front row seat for the whole show.

We knew that the time was approaching when we would move her father to a nursing home, knowing in good conscience that we had done all that we could. We were looking forward to the day when we could have our lives back, but fate had a different plan. Laurie thought that her shoulder pain was a rotator cuff injury, (a very painful injury). But when she slipped while stepping into the bathtub, the arm that was already in such terrible pain, broke. It turned out to be cancer, that had eaten through the bone. Because it broke very close to the shoulder, they couldn't put a cast on it. The doctor said she needed to sit upright with a sling on until the arm healed. The pain was horrific. Morphine didn't really help much. I supplied fresh ice packs around the clock, and slept by her feet so that if she needed something, I could get it for her right away. For the first month she barely moved, it was just too painful. The second month she started to walk around a bit, but then she developed hip problems and walking got to be difficult. I had to carry her up and down the steps. The cancer had gotten into her hip too.

Then the nausea started. We thought it was from the pain pills. At first it was just a few times each day, then more, and more, and before long she was nauseous all night and all day. The doctor ordered some tests and the next day we learned that the levels of Calcium in her blood were at lethal levels. We were told to go to the emergency room immediately - she could die at any second. The condition was caused by the bone cancer destroying her bones, leaving the Calcium debris to screw up electrical communications by her nervous system so badly that she could have a heart attack any second. She spent a month in the hospital on heart and breathing monitors around the clock, getting the Calcium levels lowered to non-lethal levels, getting stabbed with a needle to have blood drawn - every eight hours every day.

The doctors said that she only had a 50% chance of living through January. I stayed there with her every day and every night. After they got the Calcium levels down, we went home for a week. I got a wheelchair because she couldn't even walk to the bathroom anymore. We went back to the hospital to get the results of all of the tests. In the car on the way back to the hospital her hip broke. No fall, no accident, it just broke. The doctor (a bone cancer specialist) said that he had never seen a bone so badly destroyed by cancer. The x-ray of the bones looked like she had been run over by a truck - just little unconnected shards where her left hip should have been.

She stayed in the hospital for another 4 weeks. She was now completely crippled. I stayed with her day and night helping her any way I could. When she needed to be moved for radiation treatment or tests I would lift her from the bed to the radiation machine (at least twice every day) because I could lift her with less pain to her than the hospital staff could. Obviously I wasn't getting much work done while taking care of my wife in this horrid situation. If it were not for the Celtic Knot Font, I would have had no income at all. We would have been evicted, the electricity would have been cut off and we would have lost any chance that we have to survive this. I had noticed that our sales had been decreasing, but I didn't know why. Now I know it was because of the font that you are giving away.

We are getting further and further behind on our bills. Laurie is stuck in a hospital bed at home, still unable to walk or use her right arm. She was down to less than 80 pounds. Thankfully the nausea is under control now and she is starting to put a little weight back on. I still spend most of my day taking care of her. It has been a year and a 9 months since our lives were wrecked. I haven't left her alone for more than 4 hours throughout that entire time. Yesterday her health insurance was canceled for non-payment, but we used some of the rent money to pay it and get it back on. We aren't sure how we will make the rent.

Of course you and your font have nothing to do with any of this right?

If someone were selling apples for a nickel to try to help his sick wife, I suppose that you would feel OK about standing down the street and giving your apples away?

What if they had spent years and lots of money developing and advertising an especially delicious apple, let's call it "Pink Delicious Apple," and people came from miles away to buy their apples because of word of mouth that Pink Delicious Apples were so great? What if you started giving away an ordinary apple that looked just like theirs, and you called it by the same name? And people started complaining that they were selling their apples when you could get the same thing for free, and stopped buying them. They started telling each other and writing in the newspapers that you could get Pink Delicious Apples for free down the street. Then people who tried the free, inferior apples started saying "Gee, Pink Delicious Apples aren't so great after all, those people who said they were extra delicious were lying and engaging in false advertising!" The people who had invested so much of their lives into their wonderful apple, that people loved when they tried it, would be ruined. That is what is happening to us.

Is your pride so important to you that you would rather have a few people pat you on the back for your font while all the time you KNOW that you are hurting good people?

Don’t you care that you are making it impossible to pay for Laurie’s cancer medications? Several of her medications are not paid for by insurance, because there is no generic, and they are very expensive. For several months now she has not been able to buy them, and we are terrified of the consequences. This is directly your fault. What are you getting out of this that is worth doing this to a beautiful, sweet, kind person. YOU ARE KILLING HER!!

Over the past year our income from our font has steadily declined. The high Google ranking that we worked so hard to achieve has your font following it, hanging on our coattails, and taking away our customers. People that Laurie wrote to to tell them about OUR product are now finding and being confused by your font because you gave yours the same name that we gave ours. We have started getting emails accusing us of being scammers and rip-off artists because we are trying to sell something that is free. Laurie has been attacked and humiliated on newsgroups because of this.

We have spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars advertising and promoting the name “Celtic Knot Font”. We worked very hard getting articles written about it in print publications and online and creating name recognition. Our happy customers wrote about it in newsgroups and online forums. When people see that name in a magazine or online article or newsgroup and then search for it, they find both your web page and ours. Do you think that is right after all that we put into building a reputation? Our income from our font is down about 40% or 50% from what it was before you started giving away an imitation.

In addition to the issue of people finding your font by mistake, we are starting to have an issue with our reputation being ruined because yours is not as high a quality as ours. I put a lot of effort into insuring that the Celtic Knot Font is incredibly accurate in applications like CNC machining and laser engraving. Yours is not. My font also has many more characters than yours does. We have always offered a 100% money-back guarantee, and NO ONE was ever unhappy with our font or ever wanted their money back. Now people who got your font by mistake and are not happy with it are complaining PUBLICLY that "The Celtic Knot Font" doesn't do what we said!

Surely you are aware that once things are written in internet forums they are very difficult if not impossible to straighten out. I shouldn't have to be spending what little time I may have left with my wife policing the internet for misrepresentations of our product caused by your free downloads.

In fact, this is a legal issue and we will pursue it and have you legally ordered to cease and desist if you do not do so voluntarily. It is illegal to use a deceptively similar name which might mislead people. Whether or not my font is copyrightable, consumers have a right to be protected from the deception which you are perpetrating. Try giving away something with the same name as any product being sold by a big company and see what happens.

On the subject of copyright, there are many more issues than the superficial points mentioned in your reply. Copyright law does protect other artistic elements within my font. If you really believe that fonts are not copyrighted, then why don't you try giving away copies of Adobe fonts or Bitstream fonts? You would be swimming in lawyers within days.

The first and most telling thing that I would like to mention is that there is a great deal of controversy involved in the subject of font copyrights. The opinions fall into two camps, interestingly, the font artists and authors are overwhelmingly in favor of tightening the copyright laws to include fonts to a greater extent because they believe that fonts are artistic in nature and as such should be protected. Then there are those who think that the partial exclusion of fonts from copyright law is just fine the way it is. They believe the exclusion of fonts by some judge (ignorant of the intricacies of fonts) was a good decision. This second group is composed almost exclusively of font pirates and someone named Frauke Smit.

You are taking away my ability to make an income and be able to spend what little time we may have left together with my wife. Instead, I am spending my time struggling to make enough money to pay the rent and electricity. This is your fault. You are taking medications and time away from someone who is desperately fighting for her life. Is that what you intend?

Please think really hard about this. Maybe at night when you are trying to go to sleep, because Laurie is probably lying awake worrying about our income and getting kicked out of our house in her condition. This is causing her huge amounts of stress. You are probably aware that stress lowers one's immunity. Laurie needs her immune system to be at its best right now to fight the cancer. She is doing everything she can to boost it, but whenever she thinks about you she gets sick to her stomach. She can't understand how you could do this, and it makes her angry and depressed. She put so much effort into marketing this font over the 6 years before she got sick, and you are destroying everything she built. This is making her really stressed. You are literally helping the cancer to kill her!

Please have a heart!! Our lives and the quality of whatever time we have left together are in your hands. Please do the right thing.

There are a lot of horrible things in the world that one can't reason with. Cancer is one of them. Fellow human beings shouldn't be one of them. Please show that you are a thinking, feeling, caring human being. Please restore our faith in humanity.

You could literally help save someone's life here! What an easy way to do such an amazing thing. It's up to you now.

Sincerely,

Daniel Lynn Isdell

3233 Simberlan Drive
San Jose California 95148-3128

dli@clanbadge.com