copyright
Use of the Unicode sample text
<p>I would like to make some printed samples of different languages, to illustrate they are supported. I have found <a href="https://www.xmlblueprint.com/documents/unicode.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this sample text</a> &quot;When the world wants to talk, it speaks unicode&quot; used a few places, but nowhere information about the status of the text, copyright, etc.</p>
<p>Do anyone here have information about it, or can I assume it's fair use ? The samples are for a brochure only, not for a product that will be sold.</p>

<p>A commonly used text for this purpose is called &quot;lorem ipsum&quot;.  A quick search in your favorite search engine will get you plenty of examples.</p>
<p>The text comes from an ancient manuscript that is free of any copyright encumbrances.</p>
<p>I don't know the copyright status of the text you reference.</p>

<p>The <em>legal</em> question here is, what can you legally do? It appears from context that the OP is fully aware that any text is protected by copyright, and there is no question that the works are of modern vintage so copyright has not expired.</p>
<p>Each author holds the copyright in their contribution. That means that to copy author X's text, you must have the author's permission. The <a href="http://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc10/x-utf8.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">underlying web page</a> does not grant permission to copy, though it does give <a href="https://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc10/credits.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">some hints</a> as to the possible authors of the texts. Therefore, until you have permission to copy, you cannot legally copy. The fact that you can't figure out how to get permission does not override the requirement for permission.</p>
<p>Appeal to Fair Use is very unlikely to succeed, primarily because if you were sued, you might be sued in many jurisdictions, most of which do not have the US legal concept of &quot;fair use&quot;. So you would have to engage in a case-by-case analysis of the law of the authors' nations. You can' automatically assume that the Norwegian text was written in Norway, so really you would have to contact the author and ask where they the text. Then you could tailor your copying plan according to that law.</p>
<p>The other thing you have to be concerned with is the relationship between the sponsoring organization and the author. There is a reasonable chance that the organization has permission to disseminate the translations, that is, they have a license. It might even be that authors transferred copyright to the organization.</p>
<p>So this is the quandry of unlicensed internet text. It is possible that some permission exists, but <em>you</em> haven't been given that permission, therefore it is incumbent on you to ask, and get an explicit license.</p>

<p>I can't find any statement permitting the use of the slogan &quot;When the world wants to talk, it speaks Unicode&quot;. It's hard to say whether such a short statement could be copyrighted but it's certainly possible.</p>
<p>&quot;Unicode&quot;, is trademarked. Since it's possible using it in your sample brochure suggests an association with the Unicode Consortium that you do not have,  this could be a violation.</p>
<p>I see no way Fair Use could apply here.</p>
<p>Whether anything bad happens is unlikely but, as jwh20's answer says, Lorem Ipsum exists so there's no reason to risk it.</p>
