Bogusław Jackowski:
Another frustrating, if not annoying, aspect is a worldwide licensing madness. We have to spent our time struggling with license problems, an area in which we are completely ignorant, because licenses became an obligatory part of software packages. At the same time, we are aware that the GPL, being recently in fashion, is hardly suitable for such font projects like TEX Gyre. Moreover, we have to answer arrogant letters from commercial firms because we happened to use in an unfortunate context a registered font name, etc. How can intelligent people seriously consider such things? The incredible heritage of mankind awaits for every newborn man, in particular, speech, art, technology, and science. Such a man grows making use of all mankind’s achievements, but then invents serendipitously a new dot or a comma and demands a long-lasting protection of "creator's" rights … .
A nice story was told by Hermann Zapf during the European TEX Users Meeting in Pont-à-Mousson, 2005. One of the first persons who brought a lawsuit (incidentally, in the USA) for an unauthorised usage of his typeface design, was Frederic W. Goudy. After Goudy’s long explanations of what is the font design, the trial was practically concluded by the judge’s question: "Mr. Goudy, are you the inventor of the alphabet?"
Dave Walden, "Bogusław Jackowski and Janusz Marian Nowacki". TeX Users Group, n.d. [2008]. Posted on-line at http://www.tug.org/interviews/bj-jmn.pdf (accessed 20120626).