In 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act made it easier for type foundries to issue takedown notices to freeloading websites. But things picked up in the early 1990s with the transition to the modern internet. Digital type piracy started slowly in the 1980s, around the time fonts began making the leap to computers. “If a design is perceived as successful, someone will attempt a knockoff.” Online, freely accessible font archives like DaFont regularly list knockoff versions of original designs under modified names while sites like The Pirate Bay provide easy access to massive typeface collections-some with upwards of 65,000 fonts. Never mind hackers-designers have been known to steal fonts from their own companies’ libraries.
“If a design is perceived as successful,” Montalbano says, “someone will attempt a knockoff.” But these are small hurdles to a determined copycat.
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Oh sure, there are some firm rules: you can't use a trademarked name like Quarto to describe your ripped-off font, and you can't use the same code or software as the original designer. Similarly, there are no copyright laws protecting the design of any given letter, style, shape, or brushstroke. Plagiarism and theft are easy because the US doesn't have specific, quantitative definitions or standards dictating just how much a typeface must be altered before it qualifies as a "new" font. But commissioning a brand new, custom typeface can cost upwards of $50,000 per face.
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A company might charge $99 for permission to use a specific typeface on the web, or $1,000 to install a font on, say, 20 computers.
Prices vary considerably, depending on the typeface and foundry in question. Today, digital font packages are commonly licensed for web use, or for installation on one or more computers. When you understand what goes into creating a typeface, it becomes clear why type foundries charge for their designs. “Compare the process behind a project like Quarto,” he says, “with the act of generating a typeface by beginning with someone else’s fully realized font.” Creating Quarto, despite having access to plenty of source material, took nine years. “There’s a lot of room for originality, on many levels,” says Hoefler, and that originality requires a major investment on the part of the designer. That’s the thing about type design: Like all artistic endeavors, it always has relied on derivation-but ingenuity is essential, too. The laws protecting type are weak at best, but designers are fighting back with lawsuits and purchasing models aimed at dissuading theft and converting would-be pirates into customers.Īnatomical closeups of various Quarto letterforms. It is hard to say if rates of plagiarism and outright piracy have increased, but this much is clear: In an era when files can be shared with the click of a mouse and anyone with a computer is an ersatz typographer, copyright infringement has never been easier to commit. This fluency, appreciation, and preference have conspired to turn type design into a lucrative business. Even people beyond the design world have grown familiar with the stylistic differences of type design, and increasingly selective about the fonts they use. Typefaces are of monumental importance in the mobile era, essential both as a means of clearly communicating information and distinguishing one app or website from another. Type always has been a popular commodity, and its profusion across our digital devices has only boosted demand. It’s safe to assume that most people have no idea that fonts, like music or movies, are protected by intellectual property laws, they usually come with a hefty price tag, and they are uncommonly vulnerable to unjust adaptation and outright theft.
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