Ok Fred, now we're into it. When I read this thread, I thought to myself, well heck, I woudn't waste a lot of time trying to acquire that font, I might simply scan it and "build" it. But then I thought, hey, maybe tracing the original "work", and not compensating the font designer is something akin to tracing other copywrited materials, such as a piece of clipart.
Can you explain why this would be different? Isn't the font designer entitled to the same protections?
Not trying to be difficult about this, as I would not hesitate to build the logo/typestyle in question. It's just the "academic" side of this question I'm looking at.
That's an interesting point.
I don't see any difference between tracing the bitmap than if the original creator of the image had converted the font to outlines and simply made it available. Either way, anyone other than the original licensee is theoretically infringing on the type designer's rights. But then we get to the infamous 1989 US Patent Court ruling which stated bluntly that you cannot receive trademark or other design protection for a type design because the alphabet is in the public domain.
In a ruling ten years later, Adobe won a related case in which the court agreed that the vectors themselves were mathematical formulas and could, therefore, receive protection.
My reading on that is that:
- It is totally within the law for you to trace a bitmap as far as protection goes to the font designer.
- Converting typesetting to outlines and distributing it to others would be subject to the EULA for each font.
As to the relative worth of tracing versus licensing a font: That would vary, IMHO, with the number of characters needed, the time it would take, the value of one's time, the need or lack thereof to produce as accurate as possible a rendering in the original face, and the potential need for additional typesetting in the same font.
Always remember that he (or she) who dies with the most fonts, wins.