[mattferderer]

I'm curious if there are any lawsuits based on basically tracing & duplicating fonts? Does adding the slightest accent to the letter "a" allow you to trace the other 99%.

Also many of these look like they just adjusted the weight ever so slightly. With variable fonts, I'm curious how this come into play when considering copyrights.

[dmerfield]

Per Ch 37, Sec. 202.1(e) of the Code of Federal Regulations, typefaces cannot be copyrighted in the United States:

https://www.bitlaw.com/source/37cfr/202_1.html

Note that although the design of the typeface is not copyrightable, the computer programs which generate typefaces (‘fonts’) contain elements which are:

https://www.copyright.gov/history/mls/ML-443.pdf

[mark-r]

While they may not be copyrightable, you can get a design patent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti.... I've read that Adobe and Microsoft have both protected some fonts this way.

[topynate]

The shapes of the letters themselves aren't copyrightable in the US, so that if you vector-traced them perfectly, using your own "control points", you could distribute – and in fact, would hold copyright in – the resulting font file.

When discussing copyright "font" doesn't refer to the shapes of the letters (which comprise a "typeface") but the programmatic implementation of that typeface, which has been held to involve independent creativity. So if you take an existing vector font file, and alter the control points, you've created a derived work.

The situation is different in many other countries, which do allow for a copyright in a typeface. Generally the term of copyright is much less for a typeface than for many other works.