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.