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Porchez sues Levée [Jean-François Porchez]

As reported in the French media company L'Informé in January 2023: Are the millions of Google Docs users the accomplices of a forger? Since the end of January [2023], the debate has been open at a Paris court, where a funny battle, unprecedented in France, opposes two great typeface designers. The famous typographer Jean François Porchez accuses his colleague Jean-Baptiste Levée of having counterfeited one of his creations. According to him [Porchez], "Le Monde Journal", the font he designed for the paper edition of the daily in 1994, was inspired by "Spectral", a typeface sold to Google [by Levé] in 2016. That year, Production Type, Levée's company, had received more than 65,000 euros from the Mountain View giant to design this typeface, which is now available in the free Google Fonts library, and therefore adopted by many sites. It is also found in all the office tools made available by the search engine such as Google Docs and Sheets. The creation even had the honor of a post on Google's website. Jean-Baptiste Levée claimed to have been inspired by an edition of Gargantua dating back to 1882. But Jean-François Porchez does not believe it---the result looks too much like the set of typefaces he himself had designed. The dispute is now in the spotlight of justice. During the hearing organized in the court of law, Porchez,'s lawyers Levée and Google crossed swords. Present on the spot, "L'Informé" tells you the details of an astonishing arm wrestling match, with the decisive outcome for an entire sector.

Porchez is asking for 450,000 Euros in damages from one of his principla French rivals. Rivalries like this have been seen in France since the 17th century, so history repeats itself.

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Type design in France ⦿ David and Goliath ⦿