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Comment by mikedc | Hacker News Reader

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-...

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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.

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