The apple TrueType patents are only U.S. and British patents.

Freetype can be built to implement the patented algorithms.

On Linux, this is either editing one line (somewhat obscure) in the
configuration file, or making a one line change in the source RPM
and rebuilding (at least on RH 8.0, and I suspect on many other versions
and distributions).

Also, the latest Freetype autohinter (that does not do the patented algorithms)
does a somewhat respectable job when doing anti-aliased text.  What is
hard is getting decent bitmaps out without anti-aliasing, while avoiding
the patents.
                                   - Jim

--
Jim Gettys
Cambridge Research Laboratory
HP Labs, Hewlett-Packard Company
Jim.Gettys at hp.com