Are you allowed to copy intellectual property like fonts, perform a function like averaging on the intellectual property, and distribute the result of the function performed on the intellectual property?
The USA offers no copyright protection whatsoever for typeface designs. The only thing that can be copyrighted is the outline data of a particular typeface file. Those are considered to be like a "program" for generating a specific output. If I like the design of a typeface, I can make one that looks just like it from scratch, and sell it.[1] There are more exotic ways to protect fonts, such as "design patents", but these are rarely used.
So, in this case, he analyzes the original outlines, and produces new outlines, and then produces a derivative work based on many such derived outlines. I think a judge would just laugh it out of court.
If not, I think it would probably fall under fair use in the USA, specifically the "amount and substantiality" clause. The most relevant precedent might be visual collages. [2]
But, I don't believe algorithmic averaging has ever been tested as a derivative work. Personally I'd argue that "average" artworks are more like facts about the world, but I doubt a judge would be sympathetic.
Jason Salavon started doing similar artworks with photos more than a decade ago, for instance in "Every Playboy Centerfold: the Decades"[3] and many artists have done similar things since then. I once asked him if he'd ever had any legal issues, since I was doing a similar experiment, but he never replied to that.
As I understand it, a font is a bit special, copyright wise. You only need to change it in very minor details to call it a completeley new font. See Arial vs. Helvetica.
That's right, if I recall correctly. You can't copyright a font. You can rip off an existing font and create a new one that looks strikingly similar, even visually identical. However, if you do that by reverse-engineering the font (e.g. extract the bezier curve out of the TTF) then it is illegal. There is a court case where Adobe (?) sued some ripoff (and won), with the argument that while you cannot copyright the font, the "program" that implements the font is still copyrightable. IANAL and my wordings and details may not be 100% correct, so please feel free to correct me.
On the other hand, I wonder... if I take an existing font. Print it to a very high resolution PNG (not vector graphic so all Bezier curves are lost), and use some font creation software that recreate the font by doing an approximation... whether this is still consider a copyright infringement. Just curious...
On the contrary; change is the word you must avoid at all costs. Change almost implies that there also is an unchanged part, and that would run the risk of copyright infringement (if the remaining part is small, it might be fair use). What you can do is design a font that is extremely similar to an existing one. And that is different (unique?) for font designs; for instance, you would have a hard time getting away with designing a cartoon character from scratch that is extremely similar to Mickey Mouse.
Arial isn't Helvetica tweaked. It's a fairly similar font squashed so that it's metrically compatible (i.e. you can swap one for the other and if you squint from a distance it'll mostly look the same as the characters have the same dimensions).
There's an interesting story behind Arial; it was developed as part of a PostScript clone back in the days of Adobe's tight control over the Type 1 specification. Microsoft then threw gasoline on the Arial fire by bundling it into Windows 3.1, purportedly to save licensing costs.
Usually the topic of fair use is rather subjective, and even the four guidelines (roughly: is it transformative? what's the nature of the work, is it for-profit or not? how much of the original is used?) are subject to interpretation. This, however, looks like a strong case of fair use.
I wonder what if you did that and refused to disclose which works you have chosen? (assuming you used something which has stronger copyright protections than fonts)
Are you allowed to copy intellectual property like fonts, perform a function like averaging on the intellectual property, and distribute the result of the function performed on the intellectual property?