> was itself arguably a copyright-infringing knock-off.
In US law, there is no such thing. The shape of a glyph (or many) isn't even slightly copyrightable. This is settled law. Fonts (on computers) have a special status that makes them semi-copyrightable in that some jackass judge from the 1980s called them "computer programs" and so they have the same protection as software... but this won't protect against knockoffs.
Is this fair? It actually takes a lot of work (I assume) to design letter's shapes. Of course, not counting those who just trace 16-th century font without paying a compensation.
>Under the Feist ruling in the US, mere collections of facts are considered unoriginal and thus not protected by copyright, no matter how much work went into collating them.
This person isn't just collecting existing letter shapes; inventing a new letter shapes would be protected by copyright?
You aren't inventing a new letter shapes - letters already exist. You are modifying how they look, and that's not considered creative enough.
There are lots of things that can't be copyrighted.
For example you can't copyright an anatomy drawing: https://www.skeletaldrawing.com/licensing (i.e. the layout of the bones, etc) but you can copyright your specific drawing - but someone else could draw in the same style and not violate your copyright.
Same here: You can't copyright the shape of the letters, but you can copyright you specific ttf program (expression), but someone else can make the same letter shapes if they want.
You can say the same about drawing of a cat: you are not inventing new animal here. But for some weird reason cats are copyrighted and letters are not.
There are many ways to draw the same letter, as there are many ways to draw a cat.
Also if one draws letters that look like cats, will they fall under copyright protection?
If someone draws a cat, and the next person draws basically the same cat, there is no copyright infringement.
You need something "extra", some kind of style that is distinct.
I'm not saying your drawing has no copyright - it does, if someone reproduces it exactly that's illegal. I'm saying if someone makes the same type of drawing, in the same style, that's not infringement - even if they looked at yours, as long as they drew it themselves.
> Of course, not counting those who just trace 16-th century font without paying a compensation
I can't tell which way you mean this, but that sounds similar to the situation with most public domain musical compositions - the manuscripts may be completely open but a specific typesetting can still under copyright. And like that case, "just" tracing a font / typesetting a composition is still a fair amount of work.
Are fonts really programs? Is a digital image file also a program?
A font file is more like a config that’s used by your OS to render something, there’s no real interactivity in fonts (except some ligatures but those are just static tables, right?).
We’re talking about copyright here. A typeface on its own isn’t copyrightable. The judge ruled that turning a typeface into a digital font involves writing a nontrivial computer program, which is a creative work under US copyright law. That simply is true. It doesn’t matter whether you can write “apps” in TrueType; you can write digital fonts in it.
Many things are copyrightable that shouldn't be. When you can spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress to get them to extend copyright protections beyond reason, that tends to happen.
In the United States, it is settled precedent that typefaces are not copyrightable. That doesn't change just because they became digital in 1984.
In US law, there is no such thing. The shape of a glyph (or many) isn't even slightly copyrightable. This is settled law. Fonts (on computers) have a special status that makes them semi-copyrightable in that some jackass judge from the 1980s called them "computer programs" and so they have the same protection as software... but this won't protect against knockoffs.