As computer programs are protected as literary works in the United States, a font file program can only be eligible for copyright protection in the US if the source code of the computer instructions within the file was written by a human; due to the prominence of modern user-friendly digital font editor programs, this method of creating a font file is now quite rare.
Very interesting. IANAL but presumably this means that anyone can trace a font automatically, generating a new one that looks exactly the same, but isn't subject to copyright.
You can, but you'll still end up paying legal fees to defend yourself if Adobe or Monotype comes after you if their rent team sees a public design from a company not on their list.
Maybe it won't matter if you're a hobbyist, but they both go after businesses over alleged unlicensed use.
It's one of those weird exceptions that legal systems are full of.
(There might be good reasons for this particular loophole, just like there are good reasons for any other loophole, if you dig deep enough. But the total sum makes for an overly complicated system.)
I wouldn't really call it a loophole, it's explicitly excluded in the law. Given that copyright only applies to original works of a sufficient level of authorship, I think there's a valid perspective that typefaces are excluded.
Yes, not sure whether loophole is the right word. But it's a complication and exception.
> Given that copyright only applies to original works of a sufficient level of authorship, I think there's a valid perspective that typefaces are excluded.
Typefaces are typically a lot more sophisticated than when I'm taking a selfie or jot down some nonsense words and declare it a poem. Yet, the latter two are protected by copyright law.
Well yeah, sophistication isn't part of the criteria for copyright protection. I think the perspective applied here is along the lines that typefaces are more of a tool that authors use, rather than an product of authorship. Likewise, the design of a paintbrush wouldn't be eligible for copyright. Even a very sophisticated paintbrush. Both typefaces and paintbrushes are eligible for patents, though.
Speculating a bit: I think the historical perspective had a much narrower focus on what could be put under copyright. That's why (in the US at least) photographs and movies (and computer code?) wasn't originally included, and only got included over time via judicial decisions.
Typefaces just naturally fell outside of the original narrow focus, and just never got moved into the focus.
as i understand it, that carve-out is included in us copyright law to ensure that you can legally xerox a book with permission from its author (or whoever they transferred the copyright to), without also getting permission from the font designer. in this case it makes the system simpler to navigate rather than more complex
There's a lot of text that isn't covered under copyright at all. It would be a circus if widely published content that isn't eligible for copyright was illegal to photocopy because it was printed in a typeface that was.
For example, the IRS official fonts are Helvetica and Times New Roman. If in a hypothetical world, those were eligible for copyright, they'd still be within the duration of eligibility. Would it then be a copyright violation to print my tax form? I think that's silly, and I think the lawmakers who decided this thought the same.
> For example, the IRS official fonts are Helvetica and Times New Roman. If in a hypothetical world, those were eligible for copyright, they'd still be within the duration of eligibility. Would it then be a copyright violation to print my tax form? I think that's silly, and I think the lawmakers who decided this thought the same.
That's a weird hypothetical. Obviously, in that counterfactual world, the IRS would choose fonts that were either in the public domain or had permissive licenses.
Your hypothetical sounds like if speed limits on the highway were lowered, everyone would drive at the old speed and get a ticket, instead of adjusting their behaviour.
> Obviously, in that counterfactual world, the IRS would choose fonts that were either in the public domain or had permissive licenses.
there's nothing obvious about that at all; there are plenty of times when government agencies don't bend over backwards like that to ensure public access to their public-domain products. remember that what the fbi first investigated aaron swartz for was providing public access to pacer's court electronic records; pacer nominally stands for 'public access to court electronic records'
the westlaw page number fiasco is another example
you could even imagine a government rfq where different font foundries offer the irs the use of their fonts for below-market prices, thus gaining the right to charge people for printing their tax forms. and if you think that's an implausible level of corruption you probably haven't been following the ongoing saga of intuit's lobbying
You're right, it's a backwards hypothetical. Maybe in that world, NIST would have created a font for all to use.
> the IRS would choose fonts that were either in the public domain or had permissive licenses.
Presuming a suitable option existed at the time, without requiring the government to make one themselves.
It would be silly if, by default, the purchaser of a printing press has no legal right to print anything with it. Maybe we would have lived in a world where typewriter manufacturers had all of the power that publishers had/have, but even broader.
if it's fair use; that may or may not cover every case of 'xerox a book for private use' but certainly the publishers who are suing library genesis under us law don't think it does
Not a lawyer, not legal advice. The actual font files (e.g. TTF and OTF) are protected by copyright, but the design itself is not. You can copy the design to the minute details, but you'll have to make your own font. This is a lot of work for hundreds or thousands of glyphs, plus kerning.
The format those files are delivered in generally do not simply contain a typeface. They contain code that draws the typeface, which is a computer program, and that is covered by copyright.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...