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Comment by drv | Hacker News Reader

I can't really read anything that small on a modern high-res monitor anyway, but I found this bit at the end interesting:

"in most jurisdictions bitmap fonts are not copyrightable"

Is that really the case? A quick Google finds some articles in agreement, but I'm no lawyer. If it's true, I'm surprised I haven't seen, for example, Chicago pop up in more places.

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Yes it's true.

The shape of vector fonts are also not copyrightable, but the actual file is. So you are free to recreate it if you wish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_on_typefaces

What is the definition of "create"?

For example what if I wrote a program to open the original file, examine the shapes of the fonts, then write them to a new file?

That would essentially be copy-pasting the file, wouldn't it? But how is that different from someone using their eyes to "examine the shapes of the fonts and write them to a new file"? Just because of small inaccuracies?

So what if I wrote a program to very slightly change the shapes of the font? Did I "create" a new font?

I don't really understand the definitions - typeface is the style of the letters, you have a font file, which is the implementation of that typeface, but what does "font" on its own refer to? Is it the same as the typeface? I guess that's how I would use it in conversation.

If that's the case then I'd say you created a new implementation of existing font?

A font file is not just a compilation of vector shapes. It is essentially a small (but potentially complex) program describing their proper rasterization under different conditions. Just copying the shapes as rendered at a certain size by a certain interpreter doesn't really give you a copy of the original font.

Interesting! Thank you for the info. I'd like to learn more about fonts.

Here's an experiment you can try: write a program that renders a font to a high res grid, then refits vector data to that data, then publish a bunch of proprietary fonts redone using your program (documenting your approach carefully) and see how long it takes to get sued.

To the best of my knowledge, the law has no answer either in practice or in principle. In my opinion, copyright laws are not merely abused, but actually gibberish in the modern era, but, well, I worked that out 10 years ago and we still seem to be lurching onwards, so whatever.

> What is the definition of "create"?

Aha! You've voiced the problem with the very notion of having any sort of control over or ownership of information.

Some would say the greatest fonts were not created, but discovered?

A slightly related humorous aside: the Wingding glyph order is patented.

Do you happen to have a Patent number for that?

I can't seem to find any (non-Wikipedia) references to the patent that might give a clue.

This is a great question. I actually spent a bunch of time searching since there was no citation but all I could find were references to the wikipedia page.

So this is possibly made up.

I went back and found the original diff[1] where it was added. It is from an IP in Redmond in March of 2007.

Wikipedia needs a better interface to search through diffs. I had to manually do a half-interval search. :/

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wingdings&diff...

It's one of the major reasons why games use pre-rendered font bitmap tables.

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