From: zcakilh@ucl.ac.uk (Miss Chee Mei Yeoh)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: copyright and typeface design
Summary: a personal view of united states copyright law
Date: 27 Jan 93 04:33:23 GMT
Organization: Bloomsbury Computing Consortium

Glenn Reid writes :

> [Converted fonts cannot be re-distributed.] The copyright covers
> derivative works.

That is correct; however, quite what this means is not entirely clear.
The _stated_ position of the copyright office appears to be that
digital outlines cannot be protected by copyright [see U.S. copyright
office policy decisions on copyrightability of digital typefaces,
September 29, 1988, 53 FR 38110 and February 21, 1992, 57 FR 6201].
The view of the copyright office is that -
 
  In order to avoid any confusion about the scope of certificates
  of registration for computer programs used in the generation of
  digitized representations of typefaces, the office will not accept
  a nature of authorship statement of 'entire work', 'entire computer
  program', 'entire text', or the like. Only descriptions such as
  'computer program' should be used.
 
It follows from this [and it is trite law] that merely because an
outline is obtained from a copyrighted typeface program does not
make a typeface program containing that outline a work derived from
the original copyrighted program within the meaning of the copyright
law. In fact, 53 FR 38110 required anyone claiming registration for
a typeface-generating program expressly to disclaim any copyright
in the digital representation of a typeface; this requirement was
removed by 53 FR 6201, but the latter decision "does not represent
a substantive change in the rights of copyright claimants." Thus,
simply to state that copying the digital outlines of a typeface
would result in a derivative work would be false. However, the
position is complicated by the fact that the 'outline information'
contained in a typeface-generating program may well be an
inseparable mixture of data and instructions. Consider the
process by which a rasterizer produces a character outline. It
obtains from the typeface-generating program data for control
points representing a pre-hinted outline (I call this proto-outline
information). It then transforms these control points by applying
'hints' (whether declarative or procedural) to produce a 'deformed'
outline representing a character at a given size; the outline can
then be scan-converted. Type vendors have argued with some force
that we cannot sensibly distinguish between proto-outline information
and the instructions which deform it; both are part of the set of
instructions to the rasterizer to produce a given character shape.
Thus we cannot extract this proto-outline information from a font
program free from the typeface program copyright. It is for this
reason that fonts converted to truetype with metamorphosis cannot
be distributed. I would draw attention to the distinction I have
drawn between proto-outline information contained within a typeface
program, which in all probably is protected by copyright, and
a ditigal outline which is ready for scan-conversion (ie. one to
which all transformations have been applied). I have previously
argued that the latter is not protected by copyright and can be
used as the basis of an independent typeface program. Perhaps this
is what prompted Bruce to think that converted fonts could be
distributed; I remain of the view that there exist ways to obtain
outline information (without the hints, of course) without breach
of copyright; it's just that metamorphosis can't do it.
 
Nigel Yeoh c/o Chee Mei Yeoh