To quote from the article:
>Typefaces cannot be protected by copyright in the United States The idea that typefaces cannot be copyrighted in the United States has been black letter law since the introduction of Code of Federal Regulations, Ch 37, Sec. 202.1(e) in 1992.[10] The legal precedent that typefaces are not eligible for protection under U.S. copyright law was established before that in 1978 in Eltra Corp. v. Ringer. However, fonts can be protected by design patent, and computer programs that implement typefaces may be protected by copyright.
Which seems to be roughly the same as how it is handled in my home countries jurisdiction.
I could have linked you an actual decision from my home countries national court, but I assumed posting links to german court decisions would only add to the confusion.
I can try to find if the interpretation on the german wiki entry had a reference in english, that would show what I said was at least true for Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
> These fonts were made in the 80s, like me. They should be a free for all.
It makes some weird sense, from a legal standpoint. If you argue that a font file, i.e. the digital representation of a font constitutes as source code, you suddenly have a digital good that is widely accepted as being copyrightable. An exception would not make sense in that instance.
Even then though, only the file representation, i.e. the code would be copyrightable. If you vectorize bitmaps of existing fonts, like in the article, you'd be fine.
And honestly, it stands to reason that vector images files do not constitute a computer program, but you'd have to convince a judge that they cannot encode turing complete information. And first you'd have to teach a judge what a turing machine is.
To quote from the article: >Typefaces cannot be protected by copyright in the United States The idea that typefaces cannot be copyrighted in the United States has been black letter law since the introduction of Code of Federal Regulations, Ch 37, Sec. 202.1(e) in 1992.[10] The legal precedent that typefaces are not eligible for protection under U.S. copyright law was established before that in 1978 in Eltra Corp. v. Ringer. However, fonts can be protected by design patent, and computer programs that implement typefaces may be protected by copyright.
Which seems to be roughly the same as how it is handled in my home countries jurisdiction.
I could have linked you an actual decision from my home countries national court, but I assumed posting links to german court decisions would only add to the confusion.
I can try to find if the interpretation on the german wiki entry had a reference in english, that would show what I said was at least true for Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
> These fonts were made in the 80s, like me. They should be a free for all.
It makes some weird sense, from a legal standpoint. If you argue that a font file, i.e. the digital representation of a font constitutes as source code, you suddenly have a digital good that is widely accepted as being copyrightable. An exception would not make sense in that instance.
Even then though, only the file representation, i.e. the code would be copyrightable. If you vectorize bitmaps of existing fonts, like in the article, you'd be fine.
And honestly, it stands to reason that vector images files do not constitute a computer program, but you'd have to convince a judge that they cannot encode turing complete information. And first you'd have to teach a judge what a turing machine is.