So, there are a bunch of parts to this. Typefaces can be protected by trademark and design patent, and fonts may be protected by copyright.

Trademarks can last forever as long as they are maintained. So no matter how old Helvetica gets that name will likely be protected as a trademark.

US design patents formerly lasted 14 years, but new ones from May 13, 2015 last 15 years.

Copyright has a much longer term (as noted by Cliff Gilley) that varies depending on the country, and sometimes depending on when the copyright started and even whether it was formally renewed. Most people involved in the work of making fonts treat the fonts as subject to copyright, as seems to be suggested by the US copyright office’s change of policy to allow registration of font copyright starting in the early 1990s. They have accepted registration of copyright on fonts since then, treating them like software. The summary judgment in the Adobe v SSi lawsuit would support fonts being subject to copyright, but it is not binding precedent on any other court.

Note that this is about the digital fonts, not the abstract designs that are embodied by them. It certainly seems that fonts in pre-digital form (and the abstract designs embodied by digital fonts) are not subject to copyright in the USA. So anything pre-digital can be recreated as a modern digital font without copyright concerns, in the USA. Presumably you can similarly take the bitmap or printed output from a digital font and recreate a font, without copyright concerns. Of course, you might be violating your license agreement regarding the font, and other rights such as design patents may apply.

Many of us associated with type design actually find this a less than ideal state of affairs, and choose to treat typefaces as if they were subject to more protection than they actually are. As in many areas of human endeavor, because something is legal does not mean that people will treat it as acceptable behavior.

TL:dr: generally life of the author + 50 to 75 years, depending on the countries you care about. For most practical purposes, no existing usable computer fonts will be in the public domain prior to at least 2055, and generally later. Many existing computer fonts will not be in the public domain until the 22nd century.

First, the question asks about fonts. The design of the typeface, its appearance, is not a font. Fonts are the actual instantiations of a typeface, these days generally as computer files, using vector outlines. So in the modern world, we are asking how long does it take for computer outline fonts to become the public domain?

Public domain is a copyright concept, so the question as worded is solely about copyright. Copyright duration varies depending on what country you are in. The country of publication determines whether a work is subject to copyright, while the duration of that copyright is determined by the country where the question is being asked. So it gets complicated: a work created in Country A can be treated as having a shorter or longer copyright term in Country B, depending on their laws.

Most countries have copyright terms of at least the life of the author + 50 years. Life + 70 0r + 75 are also commonplace. In the USA, copyright terms have changed over time, but you can be certain that works created in 1922 or earlier are in the public domain. Life + 75 is the current standard in the USA for new works, and few countries offer more than that.

So if I die in 25 years (2041), any fonts I designed and hold the copyright on will become public domain in just about all countries in 100 years, or 2116. If my successors subsequently modify a font after my death, those modifications would have even longer terms of copyright.

Talking about fonts published in font formats currently useful, and broadly available, we can go back to 1985. For works published in 1985, which had copyright claimed at the time, the duration in the USA was life + 70 years. That means that if the author died in 1985 right after producing the font, it could be public domain as early as 2055. But as those first fonts were all published by corporations, they have copyright life of 95 years, so 2080 for the very earliest fonts. Some published soon after (within the next 5–10 years) were by individuals, however.

In most countries, fonts are considered to fall under copyright, protecting the computer files. In many countries the underlying typeface may be protected by copyright as well. But notably the USA, among others, does not consider the typeface as such to be protectable by copyright.

Note that the name of the font may be protected by trademark, and if that is maintained it can last forever. Even if the copyright on the original version of Helvetica bundled with the LaserWriter in 1985 expires, so you can take and use the digital outlines in almost any way, that doesn’t mean you can sell it and still call it Helvetica!

Also note that some countries also offer distinct design protections, separate from copyright. These would apply to typefaces, the actual abstract designs. However, they tend to require active registration (unlike copyright which is granted by the act of authorship), and have much shorter terms than copyright, so I am ignoring them for purposes of this question. Such things are sometimes referred to as “industrial design protection,” although the USA flavor is called a “design patent.” (Trivia: the first design patent issued in the USA, in 1842, was for a typeface.)

(Note: The question is currently “how long does it take for a font to become public domain?”)

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I am offering my understanding of this subject for general educational purposes, and not offering legal advice. If you are considering doing something that might be considered copyright infringement, you should consult a lawyer and/or do further research beyond Quora.

I am surprised at all the bad information here. Speaking solely to US Copyright law, there is NO copyright on fonts and typefaces.

906.4 Typeface, Typefont, Lettering, Calligraphy, and Typographic OrnamentationAs a general rule, typeface, typefont, lettering, calligraphy, and typographic ornamentation are not registrable. 37 C.F.R. § 202.1(a), (e). These elements are mere variations of uncopyrightable letters or words, which in turn are the building blocks of expression. See id. The Office typically refuses claims based on individual alphabetic or numbering characters, sets or fonts of related characters, fanciful lettering and calligraphy, or other forms of typeface. This is true regardless of how novel and creative the shape and form of the typeface characters may be.

Examples:

• Felicia Frost creates a font called “Pioneer Living” that evokes historical “Wanted: Dead or Alive” posters. The registration specialist will refuse to register this font because it is a building block of writing.

• Calliope Cash creates a textile fabric consisting of a vertically striped grass cloth and a traditional Chinese proverb. Each character is painted on a sepa-rate stripe in standard, unembellished calligraphy. The registration specialist will refuse to register this fabric design because the calligraphy consists of standard Chinese characters, and the simple arrangement of characters on vertical stripes and the choice of grass cloth does not add sufficient creativity to warrant registration.

There are some very limited cases where the Office may register some types of typeface, typefont, lettering, or calligraphy, such as the following:

• Pictorial or graphic elements that are incorporated into uncopyrightable characters or used to represent an entire letter or number may be registrable. Examples include original pictorial art that forms the entire body or shape of the typeface characters, such as a representation of an oak tree, a rose, or a giraffe that is depicted in the shape of a particular letter.

• Typeface ornamentation that is separable from the typeface characters is almost always an add-on to the beginning and/or ending of the characters. To the extent that such flourishes, swirls, vector ornaments, scrollwork, borders and frames, wreaths, and the like represent works of pictorial authorship in either their individual designs or patterned repetitions, they may be protected by copyright. However, the mere use of text effects (including chalk, popup papercraft, neon, beer glass, spooky-fog, and weathered-and-worn), while potentially sepa-rable, is de minimis and not sufficient to support a registration.

The Office may register a computer program that creates or uses certain typeface or typefont designs, but the registration covers only the source code that generates these designs, not the typeface, typefont, lettering, or calligraphy itself. For a general discussion of computer programs that generate typeface designs, see Chapter 700, Section 723.

To register the copyrightable ornamentation in typeface, typefont, lettering, or calligraphy, the applicant should describe the surface decoration or other ornamentation and should explain how it is separable from the typeface characters. The applicant should avoid using unclear terms, such as “typeface,” “type,” “font,” “letters,” “lettering,” or similar terms.

Source:: https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap900/ch900-visual-art.pdf (https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap900/ch900-visual-art.pdf)

When in doubt, go to the source.

So claims that a glyph or font ( the printed part not the software behind it), is somehow protected for 50 to 75 years after the death of the author is patently false.

This is a fascinating question.

I'm a font guy. I love type and I love studying and using typefaces. "How do I choose the right font" is such a simple question yet there are so many ways to answer it.

For one thing, I've been paying attention to fonts my whole life. Ever since my parents got me "The Print Shop" on my Commodore 64 when I was 13 years old, I've been aware of how typefaces have personality, and that personality is suitable for some uses and wildly improper for others.

For instance, does this logo's typeface communicate the kind of things you'd go to a massage parlor for?

I'd expect to walk out of there bruised and bloody. Is Agatha even a woman?

Would you trust your financial well-being to a CPA with this logo?

It's not even spelled correctly. Ashley must not be a "details person".

Would you drop your children off here?

"Leave your payment in a brown paper bag near the bench in the park. Cash only, nonsequential bills. We'll tell you where to collect your child."

Here are a few more examples of these for further illustration.

It helps to be aware of a lot of different kinds of fonts, and to be able to identify them by name. It does you little good for you to say, "You know I really like the font they use on Law & Order, I want to use that for my project." (Of course, something like that can probably be found quickly using a well-phrased Google search. And if you have a sample of the font you're looking for, you can upload it to WhatTheFont! and usually get a correct answer.)*

Get one of these and put it on your office wall (or set it as your desktop background):

All Popular Font Families in one Typeface Poster. Study it. Stare at it when you're meditating. Lose yourself in it when you're zoning out. It's awesome. Absorb the shapes and let yourself pair them with the names. It's not as great a resource as the huge poster I had on my office wall when I was first starting out—sadly, I can't seem to find it anywhere on the interwebs, or I'd show it to you**—but it's an excellent and handy resource to help familiarize yourself with the Greats. (And be sure to check out some of the links provided at the bottom of the poster, like this one.)

A designer also has to be aware of the basics of type usage. Serifed type is often used for long copy, like books and magazines. This is because the serifs make the characters more recognizable, and the text easy to read in bulk at small sizes. Serif body copy usually pairs well with sans-serif display type. There are mountains of exceptions, but you have to understand the rules before you can effectively break them.

I test a lot of fonts when I design a logo. I'll sometimes go through 20-30 different faces looking at how the characters relate to each other, the overall mood presented by the forms, readability at large and small sizes, how I might use color, how the letterforms create negative spaces and how I might use them, and so forth. I have to have a solid understanding of the attitude I want to project. For instance in the massage logo example above, the attitude communicated is strength, confidence, power, pride. A massage parlor should be welcoming, warm, relaxing and soothing. The typeface chosen must broadcast these attributes, or at least not be in conflict with them.

Fonts, to me, can also be very personal. For a long time, I was a huge Apple fan. (I'm less of one now, but that's another story.) I used to collect Apple advertisements and brochures. All through the 80s and most of the 90s, Apple used a customized tooling of Garamond for all their marketing materials, called Apple Garamond. It looks like this.

I loved that font. For a time, I wanted to use it on everything, like my college papers. It's beautiful, professional and so friendly (compared to, say, Times New Roman).

Gag. What a boring, lifeless, colorless character set. It says, "I don't really care what typeface it is."

I started to realize that while I loved Apple Garamond, it was not working in my favor. The characters are very narrow. When you're writing college papers, often assigned using page-count as a metric ("Turn in 5 pages about [whatever]"), a narrow character set makes more work for me. A font with a wider stance, say, Bookman...

Now that's a font for term papers. And anyway, Apple Garamond is Apple. It screams "Apple". Apple used it for so long, so effectively, that they basically owned it (and they did, literally, own that face). As a professional, when I wanted to spec a font for a design project, and tested Apple Garamond, I had to be able to answer the question "does the use of this font say 'we wish we were Apple'?" Only if the answer was 'no', and the font was right on all the rest of the criteria, could I use it. I almost never did.

A few years later, I discovered a font called Stone Print.

Look at that!! I thought. It's a beautiful narrow serif face, with great professional personality, and it's not Apple Garamond! I fell in love with it, and at the same time, instantly knew I would never use it for anything else but my own personal stuff. My resume. My correspondence. Over the demands and threats of my grad school, I typeset my thesis in Stone Print and turned it in that way. That's my font, baby. None of my professional projects get to use it. I'm possessive about a handful of other fonts in the same way.

Sometimes a font's established use really gets in the way of my wanting to use it, and makes it frustrating. A good example is a font called Gotham.

Gotham is an amazing contemporary (2000) face. So modern, so strong, so accessible and welcoming, yet still confident and secure. Beautiful like Helvetica but definitely not Helvetica. I would love to use Gotham a lot more, but...

That's a problem. Barack Obama's campaign used Gotham so extensively in 2008 and 2012 that the font became inextricably linked to him, like Apple Garamond blazes "Apple" even when it's not talking about computers. Gotham is the Obama Font, here in the US at least, so unless my target demographic is known to favor the guy, I have to avoid this font if I want to avoid the association.

As a designer, you are (or should be) always paying attention to design in your environment and media. If you notice a cool typeface in something, like a movie poster or a billboard, see if you can track it down later using Google searches or WhatTheFont, so you can add it to your arsenal for future use. And be conscious of trends. In the 1990s, a font called Officina Sans was quite popular. It was used everywhere someone wanted to project "contemporary office chic".

Today, I can't use it at all. It's worn out... it only projects "we think it's still the 90s." You can't pick up things like that if you aren't paying attention to the design world around you.

Here's a fantastic and lighthearted primer on how to choose fonts. This is also a great jumping-off point for beginning graphic artists who don't know many fonts by name, and want to broaden their font horizons.

So You Need A Typeface

And here is a brilliant article about fonts to avoid. It's long, but anyone serious about learning font usage (and misusage) should give it a read. (And note that while the article mentions Comic Sans, that typeface does not appear in the list.)

The 8 Worst Fonts In The World

If you are looking for new, fresh typefaces and want to peek at the cutting edge once in a while, you should sign up for MyFonts email newsletters (no, I don't work for them in any way). I get a lot of bulk email every day (most of it is just spam) but when a MyFonts thing shows up, I stop and read it. They are excellent. And I've discovered some amazingly great typefaces through their Rising Stars one.

MyFonts Newsletters

Finally, here's the tool I use to manage my font libraries. As you can probably guess, I have quite a few fonts on tap.

FontExplorer X Pro

*Friz Quadrata

** It bums me out that I can't seem to find that massive font poster anywhere. I know it was by Letraset, it just listed font after font after font, and right square in the middle of this sea of font names it had this great stone tablet with carved lettering, which was one of the foundational sources of the Trajan face. Surrounding the stone tablet, the fonts were all laid out like this:

They went from Aachen to Zapf Dingbats. It was so awesome. And huge... easily 5' across, 3-4' tall. If anyone happens to know where I might get my hands on this, I'd pay cash money to acquire one again.

The answer here is complicated. In the USA, the font (computer file instantiating the design) is protected by copyright, but the typeface (abstract design) is not. The typeface may however be protected by design patent. Design patents last a maximum of 14 years from the date they are issued.

Other countries have varying forms and degrees of protection for typeface design, with differing periods of protection. For example, registered design protection in the EU lasts for 25 years.

The name of a typeface may be protected by trademark, as well. So even if the design is no longer protected, the name may be, indefinitely.

So the question of which typefaces have had their protections expire is complicated, and depends on which countries you are concerned about, and which ones the typeface design was registered in. (Copyright does not require registration, but some of these other protections do.)

Yes, it has been done in the U.S., and the U.S. Supreme Court held it was constitutional.

The U.S. used to have a lot of formal requirements for copyrighted works: the work had to be published with proper copyright notice, the copyright had to be registered anytime during the first 28-year term, and the copyright had to be renewed after the first 28 years. (Also, if it was a book, it had to be printed from type set in the U.S., a blatant protectionist measure to benefit U.S. publishers.) If any one of those things DIDN’T happen, the work entered the public domain in the U.S., and it was considered irrevocable.

But when the U.S. joined the Berne Convention in 1989, and the TRIPS Agreement in 1994, we were required by those international agreements to protect works from other countries that had not previously been protected in the U.S.; and the Berne Convention prohibits formalities of the type described above. So, the U.S. enacted a law (Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, codified at 17 U.S.C. 104A) that “restored” the copyrights on any works of foreign origin that were still under copyright in their source countries, but were in the public domain in the U.S. for any of the above reasons. (Also for works from countries with whom we did not previously have a copyright treaty, and foreign sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, which at the time were not protected by federal law.) We took those works OUT of the public domain and put them BACK under copyright protection. (In some instances, they had never had any copyright protection at all; in other cases, they had previously had a U.S. copyright and lost it.) Zombie copyrights.

The law was challenged as unconstitutional (the U.S. Constitution says copyrights can only be granted “for limited Times”), and the Supreme Court held that copyright restoration was a valid exercise of Congress’ power in Golan v. Holder, 565 U.S. 302 (2012). It did have some provisions to protect people that began using the copyrighted work while it was in the public domain and continued to use it after the copyright was restored (“reliance parties”). But even reliance parties can be held liable for infringement in some circumstances.

The odd thing is that Congress restored copyrights ONLY for works of foreign origin (at least one foreign author, first published outside the U.S., and NOT simultaneously published in the U.S. (within 30 days of its first publication)). For domestic works that entered the public domain in the U.S. for the same reasons, those copyrights were NOT restored. So, it isn’t common. But it can lawfully be done.

Despite Chinese having a simplified variant, even simplified professional Chinese typefaces feature approximately 20,000 glyphs, and this is just for a single weight.* Compare that to Latin fonts, which start at 250 glyphs for very basic character sets, to 500–1,700 characters per font for very extended sets.

The 20,000 glyphs also includes the English alphabet, English and Chinese punctuation, as well as many Chinese characters. Traditional character sets tend to feature 30,000 characters, or even more. Whereas there are very basic sets of 2,000 characters, these would not be useful for body text. According to Thomas Phinney, Chinese fonts feature 8,000–65,000 characters.

Now, I don’t have any experience designing Chinese typefaces, but most Latin characters take about 20 minutes minimum (though I have been known to tweak a single character for an hour or hours). If we assume that it takes the same amount of time to design a Chinese character, then roughly speaking one would have to spend approximately 6,000 hours minimum (possibly 6,666 hours or more) for a single weight in simplified Chinese.

* Read more about weights and other font styles in this post: Naming conventions in fonts

Fortunately, not every character has to be manually designed. Since Chinese consists of logograms, you would be designing the components, called radicals. I suspect the software used will compile the characters from those components, or at least part of this process will be automated. Below you can see a sketch of a Chinese typeface, with some of those components at the top.

Image source: Quartz

And below the typeface is taking shape. Note again that that each character is constructed from smaller parts.

Image source: Quartz

In the image below you can see the 25 individual strokes that make the character 灣.

Image source: Quartz

These 25 strokes together form 214 radicals, which then compile into Chinese characters consisting of one or more radicals. In the image below you can see the radical 言 used in different characters.

Image source: Quartz

In the image below you see the design of the individuals strokes that form the radicals, which each need to be precisely tweaked.

Image source: Quartz

Not only that, but numerous revisions are required to get all the characters right. Below is a typeface by Gwen Yeh, a designer at Arphic.

Yeh shuddered when she was shown a first-draft page of her designs—it had more red ink than black.

[2]

Image source: Quartz

Now, I haven’t been able to find how long it actually takes to design a Chinese typeface, and I lack the insight to guess myself. I mean, even the design of a Latin typeface with a single weight can vary from about 20 hours to 500+ hours. But let me offer an estimate based on the prices asked for Latin and Chinese typefaces.

A Latin typeface tends to cost $200–600 roughly, depending in part on how many fonts it includes. Quire Sans costs about €600 for 20 fonts, whereas M Yuen HK, a Traditional Chinese typeface, costs about €2,000 for 4 fonts. Bruno Maag has indicated it takes him about 150 hours per weight for a Latin typeface.

If we assume that a Chinese typeface takes a minimum of 20 minutes per character just like with Latin, then it would take 6,666 hours per font, meaning 26,666 hours were spent on M Yuen HK considering it features four fonts. So although I can’t give a clear estimate, I reckon M Yuen HK would have taken anywhere between 5,000 and 30,000 hours.

For more information on designing Chinese typefaces, read this article (most images in this post are taken from it):

• The long, incredibly tortuous, and fascinating process of creating a Chinese font

Footnotes

Copyright laws affect graphic designers in basically two ways.

First, as a creative, your work is automatically protected under copyright laws. If you design a poster, t-shirt, logo, whatever, that work is automatically protected under copyright law. So if your work is stolen, and someone else uses it, whether or not they make money off of it, you have a right to take them to court and seek damages. There are a couple of caveats though. If you are doing the work as an employee, the copyright automatically belongs to the person or company you work for. Also, if you are a freelance graphic designer designing something for a client, once they pay you they now share a certain amount of that copyright with you. How much or how little should be spelled out at the onset. Most clients assume they will outright own the rights to your work, so if you don’t want that to be the case you need to inform them before you begin. However, most clients would never agree to work with a graphic designer if they did not have the right to use the work they paid for.

Second, as a creative, you must take care not to infringe on the rights of other creatives. That means if you use a photo or an illustration in your design, you need to be aware of where your rights begin and where they end. For example, if you hire a photographer to shoot an image for you, you are essentially limited to use that image for the purpose it was shot for. So if you have a photographer shoot a photo of a the cover of a magazine, you are not necessarily allowed to use that image for book covers or t-shirts, unless you negotiate usage for those items separately. And you do not have the rights to sell that image to other potential users.

I remember a really awkward situation I found myself in. I hired a well-known medical illustrator to create a medical illustration of an innovative surgical procedure performed on infants where the passage in their skull between the brain and spinal column was too small. This image was used in a story for a magazine published by a hospital I worked for. Both the editor of the magazine and the doctor who invented the procedure loved the illustration. Unfortunately, the editor took the illustration, had it framed and gifted it to the doctor without my knowledge. When it came time to return the artwork to the illustrators I couldn’t find that illustration and thought maybe the printer had lost it. Eventually the editor admitted that she had taken it, assuming it belonged to the hospital and gave it as a gift to the doctor. I had to explain to her that we only owned one-time print usage rights and we had to return the illustration itself to the illustrator. I called the illustrator and explained the situation and asked what he would charge us for the physical artwork, and he said he usually charged 100% of the assignment fee, so we ended up paying him twice for the same piece of art. The hospital was glad to pay it rather than having to explain to one of their more famous surgeons they had to return the artwork. I also had to make sure he knew that he couldn’t use reprint the illustration for any reason without negotiating rights directly with the illustrator.

The movie logo would likely be trademarked and copyrighted, but in the US a typeface(not to be confused with a font—-there’s a difference*) cannot hold a copyright, so if it’s just the shapes of the letters, odds are it would fine.

*a font is a computer program that contains all of the letter shapes(in vector format), rules for spacing the letters, ligatures, etc…., a font can hold a copyright as a computer program…

…a typeface is the overall shape/design of the letters themselves, this cannot hold a copyright in the US(other countries differ here).

I know to most people it’s a minor distinction, but in the eyes of copyright law it’s two completely distinct categories with a big difference in what has and doesn’t have rights:

Some of the typefaces I’ve used over the last 18 months and the not-always-deep reasons I had for selecting them:

Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk Condensed: Its the best.
Cholla: Whoa, I haven’t used you in awhile.
Colfax 1: Let’s see how Colfax works here.

John Wiese artist talk flyer using Colfax (designed by Joshua Hardisty/The MVA)

Colfax 2: I really want to use Akzidenz but I’m sick of using the same fonts and this has a similar vibe.
Caslon: I want this poster to look “book-ish.”

We Are Water poster using Caslon (designed by Joshua Hardisty/The MVA, original photo by Wang Ping)

Elena: Everything looks beautiful typeset in this face.
Futura: This should look like a Hans Arp book.
Garamond: I want to echo 1950s MoMA catalogs.
Helvetica Neue: For reasons I can’t articulate I want this to look like a 1960s psychiatry book.
Hobo: Holy shit, the “y” is amazing.
Maple: This says “fun for the whole family.”

Stassen Again bookcover using Stratum and... Trade Gothic Condensed? (Designed by Joshua Hardisty/The MVA for MN Historical Society Press)

Stratum: It looks vintage but not dated and has a good structure.
Univers 1: I love how thin this is.
Univers 2: Its a homage to TM covers.

Public domain means the public in general holds the copyright in question. A typeface in the US can’t hold a copyright, but a font can, there’s a distinction, and it’s important. A font is a computer program that contains the letter shapes, the rules for using them, and different type of faces(bold, italic, light, etc.). a typeface is simply the shapes of the letters themselves.

In the US those shapes can’t hold a copyright(generally, there are exceptions, but not in typeface form)—this is because letters are considered utilitarian. Some argue that this should be reconsidered, and they may be right, but that’s how the law reads, and has read, since we have had a copyrights here in the US. Other countries treat this differently.

So with that said, if the letters are expanded, rendered, or somehow no longer accessible as an installed computer font, then you’re safe to use them because, technically it’s no longer a font, but a typeface.

Paying for the license though, doesn’t make a font public domain, which would mean that once someone(anyone) has bought a license then it is owned by everyone, and that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense no matter how you look at it…

…I think what you want to say is “royalty free” meaning you don’t have to pay each time someone buys your movie, or views it, or whatever, but that’s not public domain, public domain is something else entirely.

Nah, probably no copyright issues. Typefaces aren’t copyrightable themselves (though there is some nuance around the font software used to display the typeface — but that doesn’t seem relevant here).

You could have some other problems, though.

Firstly, that license you got? It’s a contract. Modifying the font alone is probably a breach of the terms. If it’s a “personal use” license, any commercial use — modified or not — would be a breach, too. You’d be exposing yourself to a contract suit. And some font foundries are very aggressive about this.

Secondly, font designers are increasingly using design patents to protect certain typefaces. There are limits to eligibility for that kind of protection, but it means that hand-copying typeface designs in order to avoid the licensing issue may still expose you to liability.

The safest bet is to design a new typeface from whole cloth or just pay for the appropriate commercial license. If you’re doing work for a client, pass along the licensing expense.

Varies by country, type of media, and when it was created and/or published. Or if you mean a newly created work, as of today’s laws.

Take the US for example. Duration is so complicated because of law changes through the decades that a chart needs to be consulted:

To summarize, if it is older than 120 years old, then it absolutely doesn’t have copyright. If it was published more than 95 years ago, it is public domain for sure. And if it was published in between 1927 and now, then you need to look at details like publication date, copyright notice, renewal of the copyright, etc. Newly created works will be life of creator + 70 years, or 95 years if it is corporate authorship.

And audio recordings are different. All of them that are no more than 100 years old are currently under copyright protection. Newly created works will be Life + 70 years / 95 years, as above.

It depends on your country and its IP laws.

But I will point out that while physical typefaces aren’t protected in the US by copyright law (I think they can be trademarked, however, like the font used on Coca Cola bottles), digital fonts are protected.

Why? Because they’re software — unique strings of code, created by an individual or corporation. So they’re copyright protected just like a novel or a song or any other computer program would be. Unless the rights holder offers some sort of open license (eg, GNU or Creative Commons) or explicitly releases the font into the public domain, then using it without acquiring a license to do so would be considered theft, and they would be entitled to come after you.

Whether you care is between you, your conscience, and your local courts.

Just saying.

True, typefaces are not protected by copyright in the US. But fonts ARE protected by copyright.

In the US, a font is protected as a computer program. A font that is composed of original digital code written by a human (not machine made) is protected as a work of authorship just like any other software program. But a typeface, the design of a letter style, is not protected in the US. This has long been the stand of the US Congress and the US Copyright Office. The relatively recent practice of using the words “font” and “typestyle” as synonyms, or near synonyms, or as if one is a subset of the other, has led to much confusion.

Prior to the advent of computers and digital type, the word “font” NEVER referred to the style, the look, of an alphabet. Rather, it was the term for a collection of metal type in a particular size and weight of a typestyle. Fonts were produced by foundries and sold to printeries, where they were kept in compartmentalized trays or drawers for use by type compositors. Fonts consisted of varying quantities of type of each letter of the alphabet, as well as quantities of punctuation and symbols. Even blank fonts could be purchased—plain metal slugs of varying sizes used for spacing. A printer could buy a half font, if a complete set was not required, or a printer could buy more than one of the same font if heavy production required it.

The word “font” probably comes from a French verb meaning, appropriately, to found (or cast) in metal.

With the advent of computers, fonts became collections of digital, rather than metal, type. But the function of a font has not changed—it is a tool used to create printed letters in a particular typestyle. Instead of being loaded onto a press, a modern font is loaded onto a computer. So, a font is what you use to create a typestyle on paper, but a typestyle is what you see on the paper.

An analogy to music can be helpful. A song is what you hear, but an mp3 is what you load onto your computer. Similarly, a typestyle, a letter style, is what you see, but a font is what you load onto your computer.

Now back to the original question about outlining. Can you outline a font? No, not if it’s digital code. How can you possibly outline code? But can you outline a typestyle? Of course you can. Is it infringement to do so? Well, if a typestyle is not protected by copyright then how could it possibly be infringement to copy a typestyle by outlining it?

In and of itself: no. Just using Helvetica Black as headlines, and Times New Roman for the text, say, can not be copyrighted.

If it’s a work of art, such as a company logo or trademark name - say for example, I want to start a company and call if “DeFAULT”, and I make it in the design of the DeWALT logo, then that would be very likely to end me in legal trouble. #

Similarly, if an artist (painter or digital artist) is drawing the letters MP in some typeface, and you decide you want to do EXACTLY that, because your initials are MP, then you may be on shaky ground.

If on the other hand, I see that some book I’m reading is using a “nice looking typeface”, and I think “Next time I write an article, I’ll use that typeface” - even a combination of typefaces, that would be fine.

From: 字型沒那麼簡單 , justfont blog

中文的字數卻上看一萬三千多個。以一套字從無到有來計算，從字型的篩選到筆畫設計、製作、品管等程序，每個人一天平均做不到十個字。也就是說，製作一套中文的一萬三千多個字，以四個人的設計團隊，都要花一年半的時間才能完工，信黑體的製作過程更為漫長……

A quick translation:

There are at least thirteen thousand Chinese characters. Considering designing a typeface from the ground up, that is, the whole process of choosing the font, stroke design, making of the font, quality control, etc., each person makes on average less than 10 characters per day. In other words, making a typeface of thirteen thousand characters, takes a year and a half for a design team of 4 people. As for XinGothic font, the making is even more time-consuming…

PS. this is for Traditional Chinese

Intellectual property rights in fonts is a unique and nuanced subject. A detailed answer requires establishing certain definitions (“font” versus “typeface,” for instance), and an understanding of how fonts/typefaces are created and displayed, but for purposes of this question, a simplified answer would be:

Typefaces are generally not copyrightable. See The Copyright Compendium, §906.4.

However, they may be subject to a design patent, and they are almost certainly subject to licensing restrictions that can give rise to legal liability on a theory of contract breach.

Some font foundries are very aggressive about protecting their products and even scour the internet for improper, unlicensed use.

Your best option is to purchase (or have your client purchase) the appropriate license for using a font in your project.