The font: A hidden cost?

[Jay Temple]

Does someone collect royalties if either a game show or a game manufacturer uses a font other than the most basic ones? What made me wonder is seeing a YouTube clip of Jeopardy on the Wii U where the clue was rendered in a font that resembles Arial more closely than Korinna. (I don\'t know if Korinna is the actual font that J! uses on the show, but it seems awfully close.)

[TLEberle]

As far as I know you can\'t get a pay font (legally) without someone paying for it. Somebody\'s getting paid.

[clemon79]

Does someone collect royalties if either a game show or a game manufacturer uses a font other than the most basic ones?

 

If someone owns the copyright to a font and has not released it into the public domain or otherwise publicly-licensed it, you bet your ass other people are supposed to pay to use it. In fact, way back in the day, Arial came into being because IBM didn\'t want to pay LinoType for Helvetica.

[SRIV94]

(I don\'t know if Korinna is the actual font that J! uses on the show, but it seems awfully close.)

It is.

[BrandonFG]

Arial came into being because IBM didn\'t want to pay LinoType for Helvetica.

The bastards! :-P

[trainman]

(I don\'t know if Korinna is the actual font that J! uses on the show, but it seems awfully close.)

It is.

 

I suspect J! made a one-time license payment for Korinna way back when, rather than having an ongoing royalty arrangement.

 

When J! came back in 1984, I was already familiar with Korinna, because The Tampa Tribune had started using it as a headline font in 1983 (this link is to an example from 1986).

[clemon79]

I suspect J! made a one-time license payment for Korinna way back when, rather than having an ongoing royalty arrangement.

And I suspect the licensors are kicking themselves to this day over that little agreement.

[TLEberle]

A few years ago the UK version of Millionaire changed the on-screen font from Conduit to Verdana (this was at the time they put in the 12 question track too). I didn\'t think about the idea that font licensing could be an issue.

/But for Pete\'s sake: Verdana? Yech.

[pacdude]

Typefaces are not copyrightable. Their files are. There\'s nothing stopping THQ from finding a freeware knockoff of Korinna (Enchanted, for instance) and using it in their game.

 

 

From Wikipedia:

Under U.S. law, typefaces and the characters they contain are considered to be utilitarian objects whose utility outweighs any merit that may exist in protecting their creative elements. Typefaces are exempt from copyright protection in the United States (Code of Federal Regulations, Ch 37, Sec. 202.1(e); Eltra Corp. vs. Ringer). However, this finding was limited in Adobe Systems, Inc. v. Southern Software, Inc., wherein it was held that scalable computer fonts, i.e., the instructions necessary to render a typeface, constitute a \"computer program\" for the purposes of copyright law and hence are subject to protection. Hence the computer file(s) associated with a scalable font will generally be protected even though the specific design of the characters is not.

 

Personally, if a game show game adaptation can\'t be arsed to get the proper font or a cheap knockoff, then they\'re being lazy/meeting deadlines/producing shovelware. For pete\'s sake, the Genesis version of Jeopardy managed to get the font pretty on point.

[Jay Temple]

Thanks for the lesson, all.

Typefaces are not copyrightable. Their files are. There\'s nothing stopping THQ from finding a freeware knockoff of Korinna (Enchanted, for instance) and using it in their game.

And for this too. I knew I\'d seen another font that looked similar but was identified by another name.

[tvmitch]

I may be totally wrong on this point, but as a font snob, when I see any game show use Arial, or god forbid Times New Roman, on their show for any purpose, I assume that laziness is the reason why. I hadn\'t considered the licensing involved.

 

I remember the dustup when Ikea moved from Futura to Verdana, and I remember reading that cost-saving was the main issue, but I still don\'t really understand why that is - Futura seems to have been around for at least 80 years.

[BrandonFG]

I may be totally wrong on this point, but as a font snob, when I see any game show use Arial, or god forbid Times New Roman, on their show for any purpose, I assume that laziness is the reason why. I hadn\'t considered the licensing involved.

Knowing the story of how Arial was born, I think the same thing, but replace \"laziness\" with \"cheap\". I\'m seeing it on more and more shows, and I silently grit my teeth a bit.

 

Going back to Travis\' point, using Verdana as a replacement seems to be an odd choice, given it seems wider than Conduit, and thus each character would probably take a bit more space. Then again, the difference would prolly be negligible or easily fixed by shrinking the font...

[Kevin Prather]

Going back to Travis\' point, using Verdana as a replacement seems to be an odd choice, given it seems wider than Conduit, and thus each character would probably take a bit more space. Then again, the difference would prolly be negligible or easily fixed by shrinking the font...

 

Another point is that I\'ve found Conduit doesn\'t look very good on the new 3-D question bars used on UK Millionaire since \'07. Possible they felt the same way.

[Hastin]

This might have been due to due to programming thing. If you look at the screenshots for Jeopardy! for the Wii -  http://www.amazon.com/Jeopardy-Nintendo-Wii/dp/B003S2JI82 - it looks like they did have Korinna used just about everywhere. It looks really weird as the the dollar values, so as a quick-fix, they might have swapped it out with the font they use now. It\'s clear that while Wheel was updated for the new rules, they did little work when they ported Jeopardy! to the Xbox,PS3, and Wii U.

[Joe Mello]

Speaking from experience, I\'d entertain the idea of a \"no download\" policy as a possible explanation for lazy fonting, but that same experience tells me even your basic machine has enough choice that you could find something to your liking that isn\'t a default font.