The Hells Angels aggressively protect their patches and branding, but who actually owns the font style itself?

Is it a custom typeface, an old public-domain western font they adopted, or something legally protected through association alone?

Kind of fascinating how certain lettering styles become culturally “claimed” even if nobody technically invented them.

  • CortEnglish
    21·
    3 months ago

    You should be able to search for a patent. That’s the only protection typefaces get.

    Typeface is the style/look, font is the computer program that renders it.

    If the typeface isn’t patented you could create a copycat font to get around the copyright on the computer program

    • over_cloxEnglish
      31·
      3 months ago

      Incorrect. Font is the variation of the typeface, whether it’s normal, bold, italic, or both bold and italic.

      • CortEnglish
        21·
        3 months ago

        No, the font is the collection of styles (bold/italic), weights (12pt), widths (monospaced?), serifs (or sans), etc. that are applied to the typeface algorithmically, the values of which are stored in an algorithm aka a computer program.

        • over_cloxEnglish
          5·
          3 months ago

          That’s called a font family, not simply just a font. Font is singular, font family is the plurality.

          https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/websites-apps/difference-between-typeface-and-font/

          The reason so many people don’t know the difference between a typeface and a font is because the original Macintosh only had a 512 pixel wide display and they needed all the space they could get out of the menu bar, and so the term Font became the simple norm, as Typeface would have been a bit extra wide on their early systems.