Typefaces

t. Not no way, not no how. And shouldn't.

How do you draw the line between an ordinary font or typeface and a copyrightable one? Why should the law even get into this? Where is the harm in allowing typefaces to be freely copied?

One must carefully draw a distintinction, I think, between the typeface (graphic representation) itself, and the generative program. The program would be copyrightable assuming adequate originality - e.g., postscript fonts. But I can and should be able to write a bitmap font or a quickdraw font or any other system of drawing fonts, including a postscript-like method (postscript method being an idea or method and hence not protectible under copyright), so long as the program itself has not copied protectible expression.

I do think that the use of computers to generate graphic works and endless typefaces raises a minor problem here which really did not exist before. Prior printing technologies clearly separated text from graphics. Text was done with removable type. Graphics were done piece by piece. So if you had creative lettering (e.g., Grateful Dead album covers), such lettering was clearly part of a graphic work and the lettering itself was not really separable from the graphic work. But once you are in cyberspace, one can easily imagine a Deadhead font entirely separable from an album cover graphic work.

But even so, why give protection to the lettering itself? Why not let everyone else combine that lettering style in new graphic works?

Finally, granting copyright would be an unenforceable nightmare. When is a typeface like another typeface? Geneva, Helvetica, Arial, and other sans-serif typefaces all seem quite similar to each other. New York, New Century Schoolbook, Times, and AGaramond are very like each other. Gothic and London are like each other. Marquis and others are common iconographic symbols in some settings.

No. This is a path we ought not start down. Law is not theoretical and pure - it is practical and accommodating of various tugs and shoves and must retain relevance and workability. Let the person who creates the way-cool font market it - this has happened without copyright. Let that person create his or her documents using that way-cool font and people will buy them for the aesthetics -preferentially over another's rendition of the same idea. This is enough market incentive.

Cheers,
Steven D. Jamar
Assoc. Prof. & Dir. LRW Program
Howard University School of Law
sjamar[_at_]law.howard.edu or sjamar[_at_]aol.com

"A scoundrel who is false to the covenant destroys a whole country. . . .  Never break a covenant, whether you make it with a false person or a just person of good conscience. The covenant holds for both, the false and the just." Zarathustra, from a hymn to Mithra. Received on Wed Mar 20 1996 - 13:10:43 GMT