Recently I was asked by a rich font company to endorse a letter they wanted to send to the U.S. Copyright Office about “Restoring Copyright Registration for Font Software”. 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 rich companies whose interests only superficially overlap with mine. 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.
Please note: I’m a copyright litigator and a type designer. Still, the surrounding discussion is not legal advice. Rather, it’s a summary of how I reason about certain issues in U.S. copyright law that affect me as a participant in the font industry. Some of my views may be widely shared; some may be shared by no one; some may turn out to be completely wrong. I treat the terms font and typeface as functional synonyms.
Further note to fellow type designers: I love you all, but consistent with this principle, I won’t be able to respond to private messages about this piece. To avoid conflicts of interest, I’ve never represented other type designers in legal matters. If you have questions about the legal status of your own work, contact your lawyer, not me.
Although there has never been a U.S. court decision directly ruling on whether digital fonts are protected by copyright, it seems reasonable to conclude that the answer is no, based on the following authorities:
Fonts have traditionally been excluded from U.S. copyright protection. This principle was judicially affirmed in the 1978 case Eltra Corp. v. Ringer (“typeface has never been considered entitled to copyright”).
After digital fonts arose, a 1988 USCO regulation confirmed the vitality of this general rule (“digitized representations of typeface designs are not registrable under the Copyright Act”). But this regulation still permitted registration of certain software programs that operate on digital fonts.
A 1992 USCO regulation amended the 1988 regulation by updating registration requirements for font-related software programs. (Around this time, a separate USCO regulation about “Material not subject to copyright” was also updated to list “Typeface as typeface.”)
A 1998 federal district-court opinion in Adobe v. Southern Software found that certain font software programs were entitled to limited copyright protection because there was “some creativity … [in] the selection of the points.” Since then, some type designers have read this opinion to mean that—contra Eltra and the 1988 USCO regulation—digital fonts are copyrightable, if presented to the USCO in the guise of software programs.
The 2021 revision of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices affirmed the longstanding USCO position that “The copyright law does not protect typeface”.
A 2024 federal district-court opinion in Laatz v. Zazzle was apparently the first to analyze the Adobe decision. Revisiting its facts, the Laatz court suggested that the applicability of the Adobe decision is much more limited than what type-designer urban legend might suggest.
Consistent with the above, I think that if a court were asked to directly consider the copyrightability of an ordinary digital font, it would likely rule in the negative.
Some type designers have interpreted Adobe v. Southern Software to mean that the placement of the points that define each glyph outline constitutes copyrightable expression. Thus, the thinking goes, as long as you repackage a font in the guise of a software program—say, by automatically converting it to XML—you can register it as a software program that generates a font (which is potentially registrable) rather than as a font per se (which is not). Over the years, some type designers have reported getting font copyright registrations this way. Which in turn fueled the urban legend.
Even assuming this is a correct reading of Adobe—there is increasing reason to suppose it neither is nor was—there are still two problems with this supposed workaround:
A font converted automatically to something that looks like a software program may separately violate the human-authorship requirement. Copyright protects human-made works, not machine-made. For that reason, works presented to the USCO for registration must be authored by a human, including programs that generate a typeface. (The human-authorship requirement is also why the USCO has refused to register copyrights in entirely AI-generated works.)
Even assuming a font-generating software program qualifies as human-authored, the USCO will still exclude the generated font from the scope of the copyright (“the registration does not extend to any typeface … that may be generated by the program”). In other words, even if you manage to get a copyright registration via this contorted method, the scope of that registration still won’t cover the font itself, defeating the point of the contortion.
“But the USCO registered my font based on my converting it to XML [or some other software-like notation], therefore my font has a valid copyright.” Leaving aside the issues noted above, this kind of finders–keepers reasoning is legally unsound.
Under U.S. law, an author gains a copyright at the moment an eligible work is created. Registration of the copyright with the USCO is a separate, largely optional step. Registration only becomes mandatory if one wants to sue for infringement of that copyright. (Early registration of a copyright also improves the legal remedies available for a future infringement action, including statutory damages.)
But even if a work is successfully registered with the USCO, it is no guarantee of the underlying legal validity of the copyright so asserted. The registration is merely a confirmation that the USCO has inspected your application and concluded that you’ve met the registration criteria. The USCO might be wrong.
For that reason, if a copyright registration becomes the basis of a copyright-infringement lawsuit, the defendant can still challenge the validity of the copyright—say, by offering evidence of misrepresentations on the registration application, or showing that the work was never eligible for copyright protection in the first place.
This issue of font-registration validity surfaced in Laatz v. Zazzle, a case filed in 2022. Type designer Nicky Laatz alleged that Zazzle used certain Laatz fonts without permission. (I have no connection to either party.) Laatz sued Zazzle for copyright infringement and other related legal claims.
In March 2024, the Laatz court issued a ruling on the preliminary validity of Zazzle’s assertion that Laatz’s font copyrights were invalid. Laatz had defended the validity of her font-copyright registrations by citing Adobe v. Southern Software. Thus, the Laatz court became the first (that I know of) to judicially examine the reasoning of Adobe.
Font-copyright nerds can read the relevant part of the opinion and make up their own minds. In revisiting Adobe, the Laatz court points to details that distinguish the facts of that case from those of Laatz. In so doing, the Laatz court suggests that the legal conclusion of Adobe doesn’t necessarily apply beyond its particular factual context:
As an initial matter, the Laatz court observes that “Laatz used [commercial type-design software program] FontLab to draw and/or select the coordinates to create a digital representation of each typeface, and the FontLab software generated the code contained in the computer files Laatz registered.”
The Laatz court then contrasts these facts with those of the Adobe case: “Adobe purchased digital font files and translated them into its own font coordinate system using internal Adobe software … Notably, and unlike this case, the copyright holder in Adobe created the software that produced the font programs.” (emphasis added)
Because of this factual distinction, the Laatz court concludes that the judge in the Adobe case “had no occasion to consider whether a work is copyrightable where, as here, the copyright holder merely ‘selected coordinates and various other points of instruction’ and a third-party software wrote the implementing code. … This distinction is important … Adobe does not support Laatz’s argument that her copyright registrations are valid.” (emphasis added)
To those in the type industry who have staked a lot on the Adobe case, that last sentence might be a doozy. The Laatz court’s perspective debunks decades of wishful thinking about the breadth of the Adobe opinion. Under the Laatz view, unless you “created the software that produced the font programs”, you don’t fall within the scope of the Adobe ruling.
(PS—the Adobe and Laatz decisions arise from federal district courts and thus don’t have formal precedential value as caselaw: other federal judges are not required to follow their reasoning. Even so, as the only opinions studying this issue, they are likely to remain informally persuasive for other courts.)
Meanwhile, the Laatz case continues. In November 2024, Zazzle asked the court to dismiss Laatz’s copyright-infringement claim because evidence developed during the case had shown that her font copyrights were invalid. In August 2025, the court did so. But to reach that conclusion, the Laatz court focused on flaws revealed in how Laatz prepared her specific registration applications, and did not consider further the larger issue of copyrightability of fonts.
At least one rich font company has suggested to me that the Laatz opinion—and the USCO registration practices revealed therein—signal a change since the Adobe decision in the nature of copyright protection in fonts.
I disagree. I think the Laatz court showed how longstanding USCO regulations harmonize with the Adobe case. Nothing in Laatz or Adobe is inconsistent with the general principle (since at least 1909) that fonts are not copyrightable, nor the exception (since at least 1988) that certain font-generating software programs might be.
To my mind, the question that flows most naturally from Laatz is different: how many existing registrations of font copyrights might be vulnerable to a similar attack during litigation? As noted above, for a long time, type designers passed around the folk wisdom that converting a font to some software-like format (say, XML) was sufficient to register a font as a software program. I’m sure some of these were accepted by the USCO. The Laatz case offers a cautionary tale: it shows how a designer can start an infringement case with apparently valid font copyright registrations, but end the case without them, having been detonated during litigation by the defendants. Needless to say—a copyright registration that’s unlikely to survive infringement litigation isn’t worth much.
Partially because I’ve never seen enough evidence that digital fonts are copyrightable. Therefore, the urban legends suggesting certain workarounds to register fonts with the USCO—e.g., converting a font to something that looks like a software program—are a waste of time because registrations so achieved are unlikely to stand up in court. (Though ironically, as the rare type designer who “created the software that produced [his] font programs”, perhaps I would be eligible for the Adobe exception.)
But more importantly, in practical terms—what would be the point? Since 2011, I’ve run a small font business. Not long after I release a font, it will be uploaded to some public pirate-software website. I can’t control that. Like every other kind of digital-media file, anyone who wants to pirate my fonts can do so if sufficiently motivated.
For that reason—and independent of copyright law—my business necessarily runs on something more akin to the honor system. I try to make nice fonts, price my licenses fairly, and thereby make internet strangers enthusiastic about sending me money rather than going to pirate websites. Enough of them do. My business continues. (Indeed, in terms of rational economic choice, I’ve argued that software piracy doesn’t exist.)
As an independent type designer, my business is different from that of a rich font company with zillions of legacy families. The long-term value of that business probably depends largely on that company’s ability to assert and defend its intellectual property, and extract ongoing rents therefrom. My business, by contrast, depends more on attracting new customers and releasing new work. It’s like comparing an oil tanker to a lobsterman. Both businesses involve boats. Beyond that, our interests diverge.