Technology

Recently some other partic­i­pants in the type-design industry asked me to endorse a letter to the U.S. Copy­right Office about copy­right regis­tra­tions for digital fonts. The impetus was a set of concerns arising from ongoing rejec­tions of font-copy­right regis­tra­tions and a recent opinion in a case called Laatz v. Zazzle pertaining to the infringe­ment of font copy­rights.

I didn’t add my name to the letter. For several reasons. First: I avoid doing free work for bigger compa­nies. Second: I’ve never regis­tered a copy­right in my fonts, so the rele­vance seemed faint. Third: digital fonts (prob­ably) aren’t protected by copy­right, so the whole premise of the effort seemed fatally flawed.