Font Copyright and Licensing
This cluster discusses the copyright status of fonts and typefaces, licensing terms for redistribution (especially Google Fonts and web formats), and legal distinctions between font designs, files, and software under US and international law.
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I thought fonts were copyrighted.
Which probably infringes the copyright on the the fonts.
They are probably using a font which they cannot legally redistribute in web format.
That depends on the font's license.
Afaik the license terms may already allow this for most or all of the fonts.
Not at all.https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+fonts+licensehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIL_Open_Font_License
What is the legal status of using such a fonts?
Excluding font designs from copyright protection is a USA-specific thing. What you describe might be restricted by IP laws in other jurisdictions so doing it commercially could be dicey.
Fonts aren't copyrightable anyway, just the font files are.
He isn't distributing the font, is he? Rendered representations of fonts are explicitly permitted by US copyright law under all circumstances as far as I'm aware.