They're calling it the "font war" in France and this case will have big implications for our industry, particularly when it comes to the questions of original work and when one typeface is too close to another. Thought it interesting to share it here. Also big example of what the indemnity clause in all the custom type contracts means, and why business insurance is highly recommended.
A journalist who was at the public hearing tweeted about it:
Article (auto translation, fyi police = font):
Comments
There must be something else going on among this 2 guys that we don't know...
I suspect the winner will be the one with better lawyers and lobby power
On topic: I wonder how this kind of argument could be made more objective. With lawyers and judges missing the typographic expertise to really see how similar or different two relatively plain typefaces are, I'd say we need a more objective measure. A kind of % similarity that goes beyond merely overlaying bezier nodes. Perhaps AI could have something interesting to say about this? @PabloImpallari
(UPDATE: oops, Nadine pointed that out already, missed it)
The more bulky seirfs in S are more related to typographic alphabets, similar to Clarendon if they get exaggerated to the extreme.
The more consistent diagonal stress in S are more related to calligraphy too, since the shape is created by the flat nib (look at the stress in /c and /o and uppercase /O).
While the more inconsistent stress treatment in LMS (Vertical stress in uppercase /O versus a more diagonal stress in lowercases /o versus full diagonal stress in /e) is more bounded to happen in type design where shapes are drawn instead of written. Whatever you want to call it a "mistake" or a "design decision" in order to increase letter shapes differentiation is up to you.
The more you look into tiny details, the more different they are.
The more you look in general, the more they both looks like times new roman.
I asked him once:
- Dad, why you don't want to buy insurance?
- Bad doctors needs insurance. I don't.
But props to JFP for going after Google. That company’s type business model may have put a cornucopia of free fonts at the disposal of the masses, but in so doing it has limited the financial opportunity of independent font producers, who are also part of the masses.
There are other reasons to resist this behemoth.
When you go to the actual contours, the structure of nodes and handles is also similar. Maybe too similar in some areas, like the terminal of lowercase a. But... can the contour structure be actually very different?
It will be exciting to follow the results of this judicial dispute.
I’m more intrigued by the linebreaking and metrics when the two samples are superimposed, assuming no kerning is turned on.
For example: the same number of nodes of the same kind with very similar relative positions in the terminal of a is far more important than the resulting look. The terminal indicates a possible derivative work, but the lawsuit needs many situations like this to prove something.
My point is that the fonts are more similar than they look at a first sight.
Berthold Bodoni Old Face (G.G. Lange, 1983) vs URW “Bodoni Old Fashion” (“URW Design Staff,” 2001)
Your “developing the market” theory is hogwash (a.k.a. bullshit), similar to the “we won’t pay you for your graphic design/illustration/photograph, but you will get plenty of exposure”.
Sure, the use of web fonts has been promoted by Google, and there is a part of it for which independent foundries are paid, but the vast majority of web sites use free fonts.
Let me give you one example of how corporate concentration discriminates against the independent operator: Wordpress.
Wordpress is the Google of web site design apps, used by 43% of all web sites.
Not surprisingly, if you use it to design your web site, it will direct you to using Google fonts, or Adobe Fonts. (At least Adobe pays royalties, if you are fortunate enough to be distributed by it.)
For example, in my country, Argentina... the only foundry was Ale Paul... now a days there are more than 50 people making a live out of both Libre and Commercial fonts. GF helped very much all of those people to begin and now they have found their own path into selling commercial licences. For all those people, it was the opposite of "limited the financial opportunity".. it was his only "finantial oportunity"... otherwise they all will be doing graphic design instead of type design.
Google didn’t create wonderful opportunities for type designers out of philanthropy, it paid flat fees for work that might otherwise have earned considerably more in royalties, had all the sites that use @fontface been billed by a font-income business like Monotype.
As all the big “Tech” companies have done in the past, like Apple, Microsoft and Adobe in the early days of digital type, Google has provided free fonts to people who use their other services that require fonts. Vertical integration. Whether or not that’s an unfair business practice, the main problem is the huge scale of the companies doing it, and their consequent “choke hold’ on the supply chain that provides them with creative product—a buyer’s market for them.
Of course, the two fonts are similar; and of course, they have significant differences. (I find Spectral to be the superior font, easier to read, but that’s not the point here.) If I were arguing for the defense, I would cite the Infinite Monkey Theorem, explaining that the world of type design, particularly in the realm of Latin fonts, has become so bloated and overpopulated, with so few models for types intended for reading, that it is inevitable that more than just a few of the monkeys creating them will produce fonts that look similar. And, if all of the monkeys are French, they would produce types with trapezoidal serifs.
It is inevitable that, when a master craftsman takes on an apprentice or employee, he is aware that the apprentice will become his future competitor, parlaying that which is learned from the master into his or her own product. And so on . . .
Which is difficult because the wheel has a definite curve tension of 55% (except for circus bicycles of course).
So, please, let's admire Igor Petrovic's original work in the post "My first variable font is out"
That's Typedrawing!
By the way, I'm French speaking and don't use trapezoidal serifs