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That's interesting. Because most fonts are protected by a copyright-based license, that they don't seem to have any trouble enforcing. How extensive was your r
by marcus_holmes 7y ago
That's interesting. Because most fonts are protected by a copyright-based license, that they don't seem to have any trouble enforcing.
How extensive was your research?
- NoGravitas 7y agoThe actual code of a font (ttf, otf, whatever) is copyrightable. The shape of a font isn't, and AFAIK it isn't protectable by any form of IP. This means that while you can't redistribute or embed the TTF you got from a type foundry except as specified by the license, you are free to use it to create a near-perfect knock-off that doesn't share any code. This is where the fonts on all of those "Free Fonts" websites come from.
- marcus_holmes 7y agoThanks, that's useful information
- zerocrates 7y agoIt's basically as they said: Typefaces are indeed not copyrightable in the United States, but fonts are, in the same way other as other code/binaries. In practice, much of the likely infringement stems from the font and its existing choices for curves and control points (plus nowadays more advanced features of the font like ligatures and alternate forms), not the typeface, so it's not quite accurate to say there's no protection, and stuff like the Open Font License does exist for a reason.