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And he said as much himself in an earlier discussion on HN: "The name Doves Type® is copyrighted to protect my drawings. But if someone wants to go ahead and d

And he said as much himself in an earlier discussion on HN: "The name Doves Type® is copyrighted to protect my drawings. But if someone wants to go ahead and do what I did and recreate the type from the original printed sources there's nothing to stop them, as long as they do not use my font data as a basis for their font. It took me 5 years, on-&-off, to reach the stage where I was satisfied that I had captured the overall essence of the original. Though one can never recreate the patina of a letterpress type – the appearance of each glyph varies from word to word, line to line, page to page. That's why I prefer to call my digital type a facsimile." Trademark-copyright confusion aside, seems right on.

ars 10y ago
> as long as they do not use my font data as a basis for their font The law is not on his side. You can't use the actual digital font file, but if you print the font, or even just screenshot it you can reproduce it completely legally. You can even automate the conversion if you are careful in how you do it. A typeface can not be copyrighted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti... > Trademark-copyright confusion aside, seems right on. That's not what the law is though. Typefaces simply can not be copyrighted. As an aside I've always found it completely bizarre how of all the digital media used on a web page, for some reasons fonts have copyright restrictions built into them, but nothing else does.
- zerocrates 10y ago
  > That's not what the law is though. Typefaces simply can not be copyrighted. I'd chalk this up to a disagreement over what he means by "font data," but I'll admit it's not totally clear. Regardless I think we're in agreement: the font, the file itself, is copyrighted, but the typeface isn't.
- EvanAnderson 10y ago
  I agree w/ everything you're saying, except that I read "...as long as they do not use my font data as a basis for their font..." as "don't use the machine-readable data in my font files as the basis...". Analogously, I read it as: "Go ahead and write a program that does exactly what my program does. Just use the output of mine or the original mine was meant to emulate, not the code I wrote, as your basis."
- amyjess 10y ago
  > A typeface can not be copyrighted: This depends on the country, though. You're right when it comes to US law, but this is in the UK, which has different laws. Though if I'm interpreting the Wikipedia article right, it appears that in the UK only original typefaces can be copyrighted, not revivals. > As an aside I've always found it completely bizarre how of all the digital media used on a web page, for some reasons fonts have copyright restrictions built into them, but nothing else does. This is a very old restriction, and it predates computers. It was designed to prevent a malicious individual from copyrighting the alphabet.
- 0x0 10y ago
  A well made digital font file is a lot more than pictures or even vectors of letters. There's a whole bunch of hinting and even a virtual machine with opcodes for tweaking how letters appear at particular pixel sizes and in combination with surrounding letters. A well made font file really is a compiled software program with built-in assets that someone sat down and developed and debugged, not unlike a full game or an app.
  - uryga 10y ago
    could you point me to some resources about the "virtual machine" you mentioned? sounds very interesting.
    - 0x0 10y ago
      Here's a random Google hit: http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~slam/fonts/tticomp/introduction.html http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~slam/fonts/tticomp/introduction.ht... And another, with an opcode list: https://github.com/janelia-flyem/go/blob/master/freetype-go/freetype/truetype/opcodes.go https://github.com/janelia-flyem/go/blob/master/freetype-go/... And an example font program: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference-Manual/RM03/Chap3.html#font_program https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference-Manual/... Notice the presence of "if" and "call" and "loop". Before super highres retina type displays, properly hinted fonts made all the difference. A naive vector rasterization might bulk up from a 1px to a 2px line width completely inappropriately as font size increases. A properly developed one would ensure pixel perfect rasterization at most font sizes, even in the case of very lowres pixels. The complexity of truetype is a source for many bugs, not least because some operating system interpret the font virtual machine in kernel mode. Also, it looks like the font code for a large amount of systems trace back to a common ancestor. This one is a very good read: https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.no/2015/07/one-font-vulnerability-to-rule-them-all.html https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.no/2015/07/one-font-vulne... "For example, most TTF engines are based on Microsoft's original implementation of the format, including Windows GDI (win32k.sys), Microsoft GDI+, Microsoft DirectWrite, Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash. Likewise, most OTF engines are based on Adobe's original implementation, including Microsoft GDI (ATMFD.DLL), Microsoft DirectWrite, Microsoft Presentation Foundation and Adobe Reader. As a direct outcome, any bugs present in the original implementation that was later branched and included in multiple products were likely propagated, and may affect various programs or operating systems. This is of course an extremely frightful scenario, with a single 0-day vulnerability (...)"

ars 10y ago

> as long as they do not use my font data as a basis for their font The law is not on his side. You can't use the actual digital font file, but if you print the font, or even just screenshot it you can reproduce it completely legally. You can even automate the conversion if you are careful in how you do it. A typeface can not be copyrighted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti... > Trademark-copyright confusion aside, seems right on. That's not what the law is though. Typefaces simply can not be copyrighted. As an aside I've always found it completely bizarre how of all the digital media used on a web page, for some reasons fonts have copyright restrictions built into them, but nothing else does.

zerocrates 10y ago
> That's not what the law is though. Typefaces simply can not be copyrighted. I'd chalk this up to a disagreement over what he means by "font data," but I'll admit it's not totally clear. Regardless I think we're in agreement: the font, the file itself, is copyrighted, but the typeface isn't.
EvanAnderson 10y ago
I agree w/ everything you're saying, except that I read "...as long as they do not use my font data as a basis for their font..." as "don't use the machine-readable data in my font files as the basis...". Analogously, I read it as: "Go ahead and write a program that does exactly what my program does. Just use the output of mine or the original mine was meant to emulate, not the code I wrote, as your basis."
amyjess 10y ago
> A typeface can not be copyrighted: This depends on the country, though. You're right when it comes to US law, but this is in the UK, which has different laws. Though if I'm interpreting the Wikipedia article right, it appears that in the UK only original typefaces can be copyrighted, not revivals. > As an aside I've always found it completely bizarre how of all the digital media used on a web page, for some reasons fonts have copyright restrictions built into them, but nothing else does. This is a very old restriction, and it predates computers. It was designed to prevent a malicious individual from copyrighting the alphabet.
0x0 10y ago
A well made digital font file is a lot more than pictures or even vectors of letters. There's a whole bunch of hinting and even a virtual machine with opcodes for tweaking how letters appear at particular pixel sizes and in combination with surrounding letters. A well made font file really is a compiled software program with built-in assets that someone sat down and developed and debugged, not unlike a full game or an app.
- uryga 10y ago
  could you point me to some resources about the "virtual machine" you mentioned? sounds very interesting.
  - 0x0 10y ago
    Here's a random Google hit: http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~slam/fonts/tticomp/introduction.html http://home.kabelfoon.nl/~slam/fonts/tticomp/introduction.ht... And another, with an opcode list: https://github.com/janelia-flyem/go/blob/master/freetype-go/freetype/truetype/opcodes.go https://github.com/janelia-flyem/go/blob/master/freetype-go/... And an example font program: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference-Manual/RM03/Chap3.html#font_program https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference-Manual/... Notice the presence of "if" and "call" and "loop". Before super highres retina type displays, properly hinted fonts made all the difference. A naive vector rasterization might bulk up from a 1px to a 2px line width completely inappropriately as font size increases. A properly developed one would ensure pixel perfect rasterization at most font sizes, even in the case of very lowres pixels. The complexity of truetype is a source for many bugs, not least because some operating system interpret the font virtual machine in kernel mode. Also, it looks like the font code for a large amount of systems trace back to a common ancestor. This one is a very good read: https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.no/2015/07/one-font-vulnerability-to-rule-them-all.html https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.no/2015/07/one-font-vulne... "For example, most TTF engines are based on Microsoft's original implementation of the format, including Windows GDI (win32k.sys), Microsoft GDI+, Microsoft DirectWrite, Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash. Likewise, most OTF engines are based on Adobe's original implementation, including Microsoft GDI (ATMFD.DLL), Microsoft DirectWrite, Microsoft Presentation Foundation and Adobe Reader. As a direct outcome, any bugs present in the original implementation that was later branched and included in multiple products were likely propagated, and may affect various programs or operating systems. This is of course an extremely frightful scenario, with a single 0-day vulnerability (...)"