You are right. The designers (Noordzij and de Groot) both studied at the Royal Academy of The Hague (The Netherlands) and started designing the typefaces at the same time. The question is: are they inspired by each others work or did one copy it from the other...

Some 10-12 years ago, the German PAGE magazine published a series of articles devoted to that topic. Peter Matthias Noordzij apparently felt that TheSerif is an unethical clone of his PMN Caecilia and accused Luc(as) de Groot of plagiarism. De Groot defended himself claiming that both typefaces came were inspired by the teachings of their professor (and Peter Matthias' father) Gerrit Noordzij but that they were conceived and created independently.

A.

Oh wow, I never knew that.

I did notice that the two are very similar, but when you use them, you'll find that they are more different than they are alike. Each have very different character.

Personally, I've always thought this story to be a load of crocker sh!t. This whole polemic started with that article by Max Caflish in 1997. Although initially Peter Matthias didn't appear to have any qualms about TheSerif, he kinda got swept along by this whole ruckus which blew completely out of proportion.

When in doubt, trust the Type Identification Board people. And I can guarantee you that we never have the slightest trouble distinguishing the one from the other. Are they similar? Yup, as is to be expected from two students of the same influential teacher investigating similar avenues. Is one a clone of the other? Nope.