An Approach to Why Typography Should be Copyrightability

Abstract

Thank you. I’m not going to talk about anything that’s nearly as sexy as tattoos. I want to thank all the organizers and staff for their hard work and for including me in what has turned out to be an extremely interesting day. June earlier said that this panel is concerned with the scope of protection, and I am here to talk about typefaces, which, in the United States, unlike most of the rest of the world, have no copyright protection at all. With the exception, in a way, of the fact that the computer programs that produce digitized typefaces are protected by copyright, although the typefaces that they produce are not. My contention is that under the 1976 Act, typefaces should be protected. To start, I just want to—since pictures say a thousand words and I have so little time— I want you to look at these fonts and think about the extent to which you can perceive ornamentation and artistic effort apart from the basic letter form. There are many different kinds of typefaces. On your left, there are these various sans serifs, then moving into serif typefaces. This is the very famous Helvetica typeface, which is used throughout the New York subway system; that is its standard type.1 And then we move on to typefaces which are named for their style of art, like the Bauhaus 93, or that come from artistic movements in historical contexts. And then, because the Copyright Office treats calligraphy in the same way that it treats typeface, that is to say, it is not protected, this is a page from Carmina Burana by Klaus-Peter Dienst, which is entirely in calligraphy.2 It portrays the first verses of Carmina Burana, in varying ways, black on white and white on black. I think that it is almost impossible not to have an aesthetic reaction to typefaces. They are usually selected and designed in aesthetic ways that are best suited to express the works that are being printed, whether it’s a comic book, or a Bible, or the signs in the subway. The treatment of typeface as art is not new. In 2007–08, MoMA had an exhibition on the 50 anniversary of the creation of the Helvetica typeface.3 This was not an accident.