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Comment by knowledge-clay | Hacker News Reader

Typefaces should not be copyrightable. Print ones are not, it makes no sense that digital ones are.

In the US, "typefaces", ie. the shapes of the letters, generally are not. "Fonts", ie. the programs that draw the letters, are copyrighted as software, as something of a workaround. For more reading on the history here Typographica has a succinct overview[0].

[0] https://typographica.org/on-typography/copyright-protection-...

Silly question, so how do type foundries prevent someone from literally copying the TTF, WOFF, EOT files - and then rebrand a font as their own?

Will the bits/bytes of a TTF be different if two people produced identically the exact same shape of the letters?

EDIT: let me clarify a bit. The GP said that the shape of the letters is not copyrighted in the US. Which implies to me that if Helvetica has the exact shape of the letter "s" to be like so, and if I were to manually trace the exact same shape (curves, width, height of the letter, etc) that I can do that and resell it (or open source it)

What I'm asking is, what prevents someone from skipping the step all together of tracing every letter in the Helvetica alphabet and instead, just digitally copies the TTF font file?

Would the TTF font file I create from a manual tracing of the Helvetica alphabet be different than if I simply digitally copied the official Helvetica TTF file?

Licenses are generally sold to medium sized to large companies who would not risk legal action pursuing what you suggest. There is money to spread around anyway. Fonts and branding are nothing compared to the upkeep for C-level execs.

The same way any company prevents you from copying any computer program and rebranding it as your own. Lawyers. Vector fonts count as computer programs.

Users agree to a EULA which stipulates how they can and can't use the font. This contract provides the legal basis on which a foundry would pursue someone for suspected misuse. Here's Monotype's EULA for Helvetica Now[0], Section 9 specifically addresses copies and derivative works. From there, it becomes a legal matter.

[0] https://www.fonts.com/font/monotype/helvetica-now/licenses#

But how can you differentiate a Helvetica created font file from a font file where I manually traced every Helvetica alphabet identically.

Font cloning is a thing.

Font tracing is usually done by printing out the character to be traced at very large scale -- I've seen about 12" x 12" -- and placing it directly on a large digitizing tablet. A sequence of strokes / points is collected for the outline of the character, and then curves of somewhat reduced degree are fit to those strokes / points to both reduce font data size and reduce the impact of errors, inaccuracies, and quantization in the data capture.

Even at this huge scale, and with this amount of effort, the outline of your character will be very close to -- visually identical to! -- the starting character, but not exact. As a result, the generated font program will be quite different. For example, it may use a different number of control points for equivalent curves.

Now, one can imagine automating this process differently: Take a font file, digitally render each character, perturb it a small amount, and resynthesize the strokes to generate a new, different program for a visually identical font. This is generally against the terms of service for the initial font, however, which would make it a legal matter...

> This is generally against the terms of service for the initial font, however, which would make it a legal matter...

I doubt there's anything in the ToS for most fonts prohibiting me from rendering a short story that just so happens to contain every character and post it online for everyone to enjoy. I couldn't possibly predict that my friend who doesn't even know the name of the font, let alone ever agreed to any ToS, would take that render and trace all the characters on it.

Note that I generically said "render", not image or raster, since from my understanding, an SVG or vector PDF render of the font (not embedded, but turned into paths) wouldn't be any more copyrightable than a raster, but far easier to clone.

A font isn't just the letterforms, there's also all the metrics, spacing, kerning, and OpenType features like ligature replacement. Also modern OpenType releases contain many languages which makes the metrics even more complex. Metrics are also very refined to the point that with some fonts if they weren't copied completely there would be problems.

I suppose if you manually traced Helvetica letters, then they might have a case for misusing their font. After all, there isn't a licensing option that allows you to use the font as a template.

But what if the tracing was done by a consumer who visited a website containing the Helvetica™ font?

IANAL, but in the past I've heard the term "impliedd license" applied to things like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_license

I'd assume the license for viewing the file is implied, but I have no clue if it would hold up in court if you viewed the file -> traced the output (which is copying the typeface, not the font.)

If you copied the .ttf file and sold it, it's a copyright violation just like any software copying. The foundry takes you to court.

If you copy by hand (at what size? at what accuracy? do you include the same hinting and ligatures?) the file will not be bit-for-bit identical. The foundry cannot sue.

If you trace each letter of a font to create a new font, you are creating a new font "program", even if your new "program" is very similar to what you would get from just copying the file. The traced font would have a different colour than the copied font. (https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

> What I'm asking is, what prevents someone from skipping the step all together of tracing every letter in the Helvetica alphabet and instead, just digitally copies the TTF font file?

What stops you from copying any copyright-protected software? Technically, usually, very little (sometimes DRM). But, mostly, its social/economic constraints like your (or your business’) particular tolerance for legal exposure.

Point stands. These ought to not be royalty driven.

I'm not sure I follow. Whether or not the typeface is eligible for copyright, the pricing model and terms of use are at the discretion of the font creator.

"How a font is sold is up to the discretion of the font creator" and "a font should not be sold on a sliding cost scale" aren't mutually exclusive -- the latter's pretty clearly asserting an opinion about reasonable pricing models and terms of use. There are a lot of things people do that they're perfectly within their rights to do that someone else might strongly believe they shouldn't, right?

Personally, I don't like the idea of selling fonts with costs governed by web page impressions, either, no matter how common it may be in the industry. I genuinely like having what I consider to be nice typefaces for my web sites, but this kind of licensing makes it incredibly impractical for me to use most commercial options.

Of course, but the "point" in question is whether a typeface (or font) should be copyrightable.

That type designs are not protected is a gross injustice. The time and effort involved in creating a type design is significant. Alas, when the type industry had the resources to lobby to have copyright law changed, they were making a lot of money from stealing each others' designs and chose to lobby the opposite. There was an ill-fated effort in the 90s to lobby for typeface design protection (I was part of it as the editor of a typography magazine) but it never achieved any measurable success.

It's not worth the hell that would ensue with people suing each other because their letters look too similar. Letters have to look similar -- that's the whole damn point!

That art styles are not protected is a gross injustice. The time and effort involved in creating an art style is significant. Alas, when the art industry had the resources to lobby to have copyright law changed…

Type designs not being protected by copyright has benefits, too. Afaik, they're still protected by patent. (Not everything has to be copyright law! That's something the “intellectual property” lobby seems to be wilfully ignoring.)

A design patent is available, but the bar for a design patent is very high and the income for most type designs is enough to maybe buy a nice dinner for two.¹ Copyright registration is easy and cheap.³

People who argue against type design copyright fall into at least one of three camps: (a) they have no idea what it takes to make a good typeface, (b) their ability to distinguish typefaces doesn't go much farther than distinguishing sans/serif/monospace (if even that), and/or (c) they hope to be able to use other people's designs for their own benefit.

1. Retail sales of typefaces is a ridiculously unprofitable business, which is part of why every nearly independent foundry/type reseller of measurable size is ending up under the umbrella of Monotype Imaging. The handful of designers who have made a living from type design either are employed as staff designers for Adobe/Microsoft/Monotype, do high-value custom designs for publishing clients (although these are becoming increasingly scarce as publishers who still do print are less willing to spend money on quality²) or, the big one but probably gone for good now, embedded fonts in printers (Arthur Baker's deal with HP, he claimed, left him set for life financially).

2. A big part of Font Bureau's early capital came from producing a custom version of Palatino for the gravure pages of Playboy that would match the printed output on the offset pages. There's probably a whole book to be written about the ways in which Hugh Hefner spent Playboy money in ways that nominally benefited the magazine but had a bigger impact in providing cash to artistic endeavors (most notably writers) that wouldn't otherwise see much money.

3. And optional. If registration occurs after an infringement, the copyright holder can only sue for actual damages. Pre-infringement registration also entitles the copyright holder to sue for punitive damages.

The digital one is considered as code. In some countries even the print one has copyright.

From: https://glarts.org/font-and-typeface-legal-tip-sheet/

> In the United States, fonts are protectable under copyright law. Typefaces, however, are not. ... A trademark protects what a typeface is called, a copyright protects how a font program is written, and a design patent protects letter design—how the letters appear.

So if I understand this correctly, then unless they have a design patent for the entire range of typefaces, you could use some of the typefaces if you use a different encoding. Perhaps someone with legal background can comment.

> Fonts should not be copyrightable. Print fonts are not, it makes no sense that digital ones are.

I agree with your first statement, except that I'm stuck re-wording it to "I wish fonts weren't copyrightable" because I can't find an argument/proper analogy that works.

I don't know the details around copyright law, IANAL (surprise!) either, so I'm looking at this from an incredibly naive legal perspective -- that almost everything is copyrightable (in the United States) except for facts. Since copyright law predates digital fonts, you have to look at things they are most like to see what applies (and find a judge to agree, but that part seems to be the simple). Print fonts are not copyrightable. I'm not sure why they're not copyrightable -- were they explicitly excluded (i.e. there's a law on the books that says "Print fonts are not copyrightable"[0]) or were they found to be "like this other thing that is excluded, so they are excluded, too".

Then, looking at what's similar about print fonts versus digital ones, there's not really a whole lot other than that they're "concepts" that represent letters in this context. One is chiseled out of some form of metal or strong material, is that size/shape permanently and though there's science/research behind it, for whatever reason, it didn't represent enough of a kind of work to warrant protection. A font has a lot in common on the surface, but underneath it's a program[1]. One could extend that to say "bitmap fonts are so similar to print fonts that they should be excluded" but one cannot say the same for TTF/others and I'd imagine.

The bigger problem, though, is that exclusions to copyright are basically never made any longer. This used to be more common, but the entertainment industry's money/power continues to extend copyright in ways that benefit them to the exclusion of other industries -- particularly software -- the large players have a lot of money, so a law that was designed to equally protect invention/creation (really, patent law was by-and-large aimed at helping individual inventors protect their invention/give them a chance to capitalize it against abusive larger competition) ends up helping secure the existing players positions.

Now, I don't know if anyone wants Warner Brothers to make Mickey Mouse cartoons, but I suspect there's a less heavy-handed approach to protecting long-held IP while not extending copyright, basically, indefinitely for everything.

So yeah, all of that to say "No, I don't think fonts should be copyrightable, either ... but I can say that for so many things and there's so much wrong with Copyright these days that it warrants revisiting a reset/rethink." Maybe one day!

[0] It won't be that sentence, it'll be a page worth of explaining why it doesn't fall into the various defined kinds of works.

[1] TTF hinting is turing complete.

To answer your specific question as to why fonts are not copyrightable in the US, 37 C.F.R. § 202.1(e) specifies that a "typeface as typeface" is not copyrightable.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/37/202.1

Print fonts are copyrightable.

In the United States, the shapes of typefaces are not eligible for copyright.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...

Ah, so that's how knock-off fonts work. You can reproduce essentially the same output (the typeface) as long as the code that produces it is distinct (the font).

But in France and Germany but not Austria despite the Vienna Agreement for the Protection of Type Faces and their International Deposit.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/seldoc/1973/2203.htm...

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