  We report on the status of the analysis of the static energy in
$2+1+1$-flavor QCD. The static energy is obtained by measuring Wilson line
correlators in Coulomb gauge using the HISQ action, yielding the scales
$r_{0}/a$, $r_{1}/a$, $r_{2}/a$, their ratios, and the string tension $\sigma
r_{i}^{2}$. We put emphasis on the possible effects due to the dynamical
charm-quark by comparing the lattice results to continuum results of the static
energy with and without a massive flavor at two-loop accuracy. We employ
gauge-field ensembles from the HotQCD and MILC Collaborations.
