"Regarding your legal question, many copyright resources are vague with respect to the specific subject of copyright protection of fonts and dingbats not because they may not be copyrighted, but because they fall under the appropriate category of a work set in a tangible medium. I am of the opinion that they are definitely protected under copyright laws."

"A copyright protects expressions of ideas set in a tangible form, and fonts and dingbats are set in a tangible form when they are created and saved to a hard drive, or printed out in a document, or any other tangible medium whereby a font or dingbat may be expressed. Fonts and dingbats are protected just as much as graphics, text or any other form of artistic expression. The problem is that many people believe that they may not be copyrighted because artists use them to create new works of art. Yes, artists use them to create new works of art because most font and dingbat creators allow them to do that...if you included a text file in the winzips where you provide your fonts and dingbats that stated that your work may *only* be used for creating flyers for charitable organizations, that copyright requirement would have to be respected."

"I firmly believe that anyone who uses a font or dingbat to create a new one without permission from the original owner is definitely committing copyright infringement. Fonts and dingbats are automatically protected by a copyright, there is no doubt about that. The problem lies in that the copyright is not enforced or respected because fonts and dingbats are so easily downloadable and distributable. I feel that we should start educating the internet community about the artistic rights of font creators, just as we have been doing about graphic artists."


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