Legality of using Fonts

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 10 Feb 2006 20:24:34 -0800, Ross Ridge wrote:

> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> It is highly unlikely that any judge will be fooled by a mere change in
>> format ("but Your Honour, I converted the TTF file into a bitmap").
> 
> If that were true, almost the entire X11 bitmap font collection would
> be illegal.  Fonts aren't subject copyright, just the hints in most
> outline fonts, which are considered computer programs.

This may come as a shock to you, but the USA is not the entire world, and
the US government's decision to exclude typefaces from copyright
protection is anomalous. In almost the entire rest of the world,
typefaces (the design of a font) are able to be copyrighted, and so are
fonts whether they are bitmapped or outline (with or without hints).


See, for example: http://www.typeright.org/feature4.html

In any case, even in the USA, hinted fonts are copyrightable, and merely
removing the hints (say, by converting to a bitmap) is no more legal than
whiting out the author's name from a book and claiming it as your own.

Of course, like all these issues, the actual decision of a judge and jury
in the USA is uncertain -- who knows whether they will consider a
bitmapped version of a TTF font to be a derivative work or not? So even in
the USA, unless you want to spend big dollars on legal fees, the best
advice is to stick to fonts which are distributed under open licences.



-- 
Steven.