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In the U.S, fonts are not copyrightable (although there is a movement to change that). Only the "hints" and associated software behind them can be copyrighted. However, for a fixed point size, anyone can copy a font, pixel for pixel, without infringing copyright. Since web pages typically use a small number of standard point sizes, there is no reason why a set of fixed point sized fonts can't be created by copying them exactly from the screen displays of Microsoft's or Apples's or anyone's proprietary fonts, for use on Linux. It puzzles me as to why this hasn't been done.

Fonts can't be copyrighted (at least, they can't in the US). Seems like the same argument could be made against Copyleft:

Indeed, but it's weirder than that.

The confusion basically stems from the fact that the law takes something that in all ways resembles intellectual property, and instead treats it like physical property. Imagine if a written story were treated as entirely dependent on the page it was printed on. If you photocopied the page, the author would have no rights over your copy at all. (This is why copyright exists in the first place!)

Basically, while you can't copyright a typeface, it is still your property, and you still can dictate terms to the people you sell it to.

I can sell you a car on the condition that you not sell it to anyone else. If you do, I can sue you for breaking our contract. However, I can't sue the person you sold it to if he sells it, because the car is no longer mine. I have no rights over the car once it leaves my ownership.

This works in the physical world because you can't simply "copy and paste" a car to have 2 cars.

The (flawed) idea behind the US interpretation is that if type could be copyrighted, then type makers could wield those rights over users of that type. If you designed the type that a book used, and didn't like what the book was about, you could demand that they stop using your type. (It is exactly the same fear being instilled in this article.)

This make logical sense in a vacuum (like Congress), but is completely at odds with the way type has always worked before, and continues to work in other countries. It's purely a hypothetical situation, and one that could be prevented by some means other than completely excluding typefaces from copyright protections.

It's also worth noting that the non-copyrightability of type in the US is widely opposed. It isn't the first time the US has been stupid about IP rights.

Wrong.

The "look and feel" of a series of squiggles on a page/screen is a typeface, not a "font."

Which is why I could create a font that exactly mimics the look and feel of Comic Sans, call it Comik Sanz, and use it at 48pt in all of my business correspondence.

Cite.

Under today's ridiculous copyright interpretation I can very much believe that having a font used in a document would mean the document was legally a derivative of the font.

This might be a fair criticism, if not for the fact that, in the United States, typefaces cannot be copyrighted at all.

The font is a part of the finished document in a way the gimp isn't a part of a picture and gcc isn't a part of the code it makes.

The issue is of fonts embedded in the document. It's just like including any other GPLed code, except in in this case, the code is the typefaces' bytecode.

No they can't, not in the US anyway.
typeright.org: "The US Copyright Office still officially refuses to accord protection for typeface designs."
There are licensing and trademark issues, but not copyright. As the poster said, the lawyer works on intimidation, not actually getting judgements. (Unless the DMCA has radically changed this, which is possible as it seems to have all kinds of unintended consequences.)

Yes, you too can own a life+70 year (or 90-year corporate) monopoly, compliments of your bought-and-paid for congress critters and a cowardly Supreme Court that chooses quarterly economic expediency over constitutionality. You too can own a government entitlement to a very long-term monopoly on the very shape of the letters of the Roman alphabet.

How is a font any differnt to any other work of art or design? If obviously have no idea how much work goes into creating a font. People can spend years creating a good font.

Besides, I thought fonts were the exception, in that you can't copyright fonts. There is even a site about it: www.typeright.org.

There is a movement underfoot called TypeRight advocating copyright protection for fonts. The site also explains some of the copyright issues.

It interesting that the lack of copyright protection has apparently not hindered the creation of a wide variety of fonts.

While this may change in the future, due to intense
lobbying efforts by special interests and the general
prevailing culture of intellectual property grants --
I will not say "rights" because it is a devaluing abuse
of the word -- the constitutional proviso precluding
ex post facto law insures that all currently existing
fonts will never be copyrighted (within the
U.S.).

The US copyright office does not allow anyone to copyright a font.

This is an anomaly that will be overturned. We are already seeing the beginnings of it.

Also, most other countries do allow font designs to be copyrighted, so I hope you're not planning to use that font outside the US.

Although the typeface design itself is not covered, there is one other aspect of typefaces that is covered by copyright, the outline information in the file.

It is illegal to make a derivative digital copy of a font file without permission from the copyright holder.

This covers such dubious practises as importing a font in fontographer, scaling all the glyphs by %101, and saving it as a new file.

For more information, check out TypeRight.Org.

Coverage of a ruling in this regard is at Internet Type Foundry Index.
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Font licensing is a very contentious issue. While it is true that there is a wealth of freely available fonts, the chances are that the fonts are ``ripoffs'' in some sense, unless they come with a license indicating otherwise. The issue is made more confusing by intellectual property laws regarding typefaces. Basically, in the USA, font files are protected by copyright, but font renderings are not. In other words, it's illegal to redistribute fonts, but it's perfectly legal to ``reverse-engineer'' them by printing them out on graph paper and designing the curves to match the printout. Reverse engineered fonts are typically cheap and freely available, but of poor quality. These fonts, as well as pirated fonts are often distributed on very cheap CDs containing huge amounts of fonts. So it's not always easy to tell if a font is reverse engineered, or simply pirated. This situation creates an enormous headache for anyone hoping to package free fonts for Linux.

Perhaps one of the most offensive things about the nature of font piracy is that it artificially debases the value of the work that type designers do. Pirated fonts invariably are bundled en masse onto these one zillion font CDs, with no due credit given to the original designers. In contrast, what is commendable about several legitimate font foundries is that they credit their designers.