GoKawiilEric Lengyel dedicates Slug text-rendering patent to public domain
Eric Lengyel, who published the Slug GPU text-rendering algorithm in 2017 and patented it in 2019, has released that patent into the public domain as of March 17, 2026. Slug renders font glyphs directly from their vector outlines in the fragment shader, avoiding texture atlases or per-frame tessellation. The patent's release prompted the developers behind Slughorn, a C++20 implementation of the technique, to publish a detailed explanation of how it and rival GPU text-rendering methods work.