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Registrar of Copyrights US Copyright Office Washington, D.C.
Hon. Member of Congress Dear Registrar of Copyrights/Hon. Member of Congress: As designers and users of typefaces, we are dismayed to be witnessing the destruction of the type industry. It is now common practice for the unscrupulous to simply copy the digital font program from an original typeface design, claim it as their own, and offer it for sale under a different name, completely disregarding the original creator. With today's computer technology, it takes only seconds to steal a type designer's creative work—work that took hundreds of hours to create. Unfortunately, this situation is perpetuated by current U.S. copyright laws, which do little to protect the original designers. As you know, the foundation of copyright is to provide incentives for creative people in order to expand the availability of creative works. These incentives can be economic and aesthetic. The U.S. has represented that it provides moral rights to creative people; yet, typeface designers are denied this protection. The fact that copyright laws in most developed countries provide protection for the typeface designer further calls the U.S. position into question. In this area, the United States has not lived up to its desired position as a leader in intellectual property protection. We urge the U.S. Copyright Office to consider typeface designs for copyright protection based on the same principles as other intellectual property rights—that copyright should be implied if unchallenged. As an alternative, we urge the Copyright Office to adopt a policy that would permit copyright protection for font designs if it can be demonstrated that the work in question is original and has some creative aspects which are identifiable. That is to say, a font should be copyrightable if it contains considerable authorship. The U.S. Copyright Office should not categorically deny copyright for all typeface designs. Sincerely,
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