OCTO wrote: ↑25 Nov 2023, 15:01
I am not a layer either, but I believe that copyright means "not to copy by any mean", and to copy its actual design. For instance, reading and recording a copyrighted book and putting it publicly without permission is a straight "copyright infringement". What I believe is that the
design of a font itself it what is copyrighted, not the vector points. For instance, some copyrighted fonts are not allowed to be embedded, so that its design can't be used on another computer. If design is copied manually and now the exactly the same output is displayed without the right to do it is what is questionable.
In the US, a typeface cannot be protected by copyright, but computer data or instructions can be. Because a font file is "instructions" for creating the design, that can be copyright. But the "shapes" of the type are not protected. So theoretically, you could print out each letter, scan it in, and then create a new font, as you have not copied the digital data.
There are plenty of legal fonts, often free open-source, that are identical or very similar to commercial type. For example, Academico is all but identical to New Century Schoolbook. There are also plenty of "Garamond clones", Libre Bodoni, etc, etc. Of course, there are very slight differences, if you overlay them.
But Monotype can't sue you because your font "looks like" one of theirs. They must show that you have copied their font file.
However, different countries have different laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellect ... _typefaces
There was a music font called Briard, which is identical to Sonata, and which I suspect was 'created' in a font editor from a copy of Sonata itself, as the glyphs have
exactly the same curve points and dimensions. That would be a clear breach of law, but I guess no one (apart from me) has time to review and compare all the glyphs of a font, and then start a lawsuit.
