Font licensing lawsuits

[Donateli]

Hi I was wondering if any one has a similar problem, I have heard recently that BSA (Business Software Alliance) is pursuing printers and publishers that are in violation of there software licensing agreement for the fonts that the have on hand.
There are some big companies that are in the news right now that may have to pay substantial settlements, NBC ($2million+) comes to mind but there are a score of others too.
I need to get a handle on this problem and wondered if any one else had come up against this too?
In years past, no one paid much attention to the licensing agreement for fonts mostly because it was never enforced, until now. The licensing agreement has always been there and is covered by copyright law.
We are all going to need to become compliant, but it seems that this will be an enormous undertaking for even a small printer-prepress house like us.
One problem I can see is pdfs with embedded fonts which are not in compliance with a licensing agreement which states that the font is not to be embedded although its permissions bits may allow for this.
If any one has experience on how to best handle this harry situation please let me know.
Thanks in advance

 

[JoshB]

I can't see how anyone could reasonably expect you to look up the licensing for a font yourself if they couldn't be bothered to set the licensing options properly when they created it.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Hmm if BSA inspectors have and PDF files in their mail that violate the copyright laws. Perhaps time to design a PDF file with fonts that have no rights, but wrong bits, and spam it to everyone and then no one is clean

But if it is design, I don't even see how turning text into curves would circumvent copyright, the shape is the same? Do they also copyright the letters of the alphabet?

 

[JoshB]

I'm not a lawyer, but from what I understand it's not possible to copyright facts, and fonts are basically the factual mathematical representation of the vectors used to draw a set of glyphs. Most fonts are based on traditional typefaces which are actually very old, so the design itself is not copyright. This is why you see the same font from several different companies.

Now, if you invent a truly new typeface and make a font for it, then you certainly have something that is copyright-able, but if you failed to use the --built in-- facilities for marking your copyright and stating your licensing, then I don't think you'd have a leg to stand on if someone does something that you didn't want them to.

If someone sued you for using an embedded font which they didn't mark as unembeddable, then I think you'd have a pretty good case for bringing criminal entrapment charges, No?

 

[james.bredenhof]

Assuming you're not using designer-supplied fonts for new work, I think you should be fine.

I found the following excerpt from a PDF (fonts embedded!), courtesy of BSA: http://www.bsa.org/country/~/media/Files/Tools_And_Resources/Guides/FontGuide/FontGuide_enGB.ashx
"Most font publishers allow users to embed font software into documents, but only for previewing and printing. This means you can send a document for feedback or approval but the person at the other end cannot use, edit, access or retain the font software for other purposes."

Taking this statement as being accurate and representative of most font licensing agreements, you could conclude that
- PDFs with fonts embedded are okay
- taking native fonts for the purpose of printing the native InDesign/etc. doc is okay

... and this has always been my understanding/practice... but it's been a while since I was so bored I tried to read the text on a font license.

 

[davidmwe]

Package Fonts

Package Fonts

Assuming you're not using designer-supplied fonts for new work, I think you should be fine.

I found the following excerpt from a PDF (fonts embedded!), courtesy of BSA: http://www.bsa.org/country/~/media/Files/Tools_And_Resources/Guides/FontGuide/FontGuide_enGB.ashx
"Most font publishers allow users to embed font software into documents, but only for previewing and printing. This means you can send a document for feedback or approval but the person at the other end cannot use, edit, access or retain the font software for other purposes."

Taking this statement as being accurate and representative of most font licensing agreements, you could conclude that
- PDFs with fonts embedded are okay
- taking native fonts for the purpose of printing the native InDesign/etc. doc is okay

... and this has always been my understanding/practice... but it's been a while since I was so bored I tried to read the text on a font license.

And use FlightCheck to automatically Package the fonts used in your Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Quark, EPS, etc print files, after preflighting the job of course. <<grin>>

As a side-note, bit more on FlightCheck and fonts:
Typographic Preflight Checklist for Font Preflight


This has been a gray area ever since FlightCheck was launched back at Seybold S.F. 1996. As a printer outputting the file, james.bredenhof's advice above seems to be the general rule-of-thumb and de-facto standard (apart from delivering a PDF itself). Indeed if you are not converting your fonts to outline in your artwork and packaging them to be used by another graphic designer, then yes, they should have the appropriate license to use those fonts. Check to see if the EULA (End User License Agreement) allows for multiple designers in a team to use them for a certain period or similar language. I am no lawyer, so it is always best to seek professional legal advice.

Unfortunately, it is very important for commercial graphic designers to read very carefully and understand the EULA for the typefaces they want to, or are using, in their designs.

 

[Tech]

This zero-sum game of suing people for money is the worst side of our economy. At our company, we were instructed to get written permissions to even use "FREE" internet fonts that clearly stated FREE usage even for commercial purposes. Nothing like working in fear huh?

Seriously, no one in the world is 100% font compliant, least of all people, publishers. They don't want to spent the big money on font compliance but they expect in-house designers to be creative. Magazines are probably the most compliant, they work strictly with templates and approved fixed fonts.

The irony is if Steve Jobs never put fonts into Mac OS... in an indirect way, Jobs even changed print industry.

 

[rich apollo]

Unfortunately, it is very important for commercial graphic designers to read very carefully and understand the EULA for the typefaces they want to, or are using, in their designs.

I don't think that I have the background to understand an End User License Agreement. As they're written by lawyers to provide a legally defensible framework of liabilities and uses, wouldn't a body need a legal background to get the full meaning?

 

[davidmwe]

I don't think that I have the background to understand an End User License Agreement. As they're written by lawyers to provide a legally defensible framework of liabilities and uses, wouldn't a body need a legal background to get the full meaning?

You have a point rich apollo. When in doubt, ask the font foundry. Totally understand what you mean.

 

[Dov Isaacs]

In general, print service providers really have nothing to worry about in terms of font licensing if all they are dealing with are PDF, EPS, and PostScript files with fonts embedded submitted by their clients. If the creator of such a file has violated a font's EULA (end user license agreement) by somehow getting the font embedded in the output file although either the EULA prohibits same or the user modifies the protection bits within the font, the onus of license violation is on the creator, not the receiver of such a file. I have not personally heard of anyone receiving such files ever being pursued for font license violation.

The real issue is that of a customer packaging a document with its image and font assets for the print service provider to either finish, fixup, and/or generate the final PDF or PostScript for printing. It is in this case where most font EULAs permit such loose font transmission only if the recipient (in this case, the print service provider) also has a license for the font. This is the major case where licensing compliance is an issue and where many print service providers look the other way hoping that no one will check on them. Major font vendors have heavily-discounted volume licenses for their entire libraries such as Adobe has for its font library via Font Folio to assist with font licensing compliance.

Note that for some font vendors, outlining text thus eliminating the need to embed an embedding restricted font into a a PDF, EPS, or PostScriopt file, still doesn't pass muster in terms of the fonts' particular EULA. Many EULAs restrict outlining and rasterization as well as embedding. Again, though, the recipient of such content is typically not held accountable for such licensing violations.

Further note that in this thread, the issue of copyright has been brought up. This issue is generally not that of copyright law which primarily covers the name of the font, but rather patent law and contract law. In most jurisdictions, a font's general design cannot be protected by copyright, but the underlying font program (outline instructions, hinting, and metrics) of Type 1, TrueType, and OpenType fonts is protected by patents. And when you acquire a license for a font (virtually no one actually buys a font itself, but rather, a license to use a font), you agree to abide by the terms of the end user license agreement. Violations of that license agreement are handled under civil contract law lawsuits, not copyright law.

Print service providers who also do creative work with customer-supplied artwork and assets (including fonts as well as vector and raster third party artwork) should occasionally check with their legal advisors to assure compliance with licensing and other legal issues with regards to use of such assets and maintain clear and enforceable internal policies for their employees to follow in terms of accepting, using, and storing such assets.

- Dov

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Thanks Dov, that makes it much clearer, and trickier... since trouble shooting may at times need the actual font the customer used, rather than the font version that is on the designers computer. One example is the font Times, which exists in many different metrics. Since many customers lack the hardware and know how to produce bullet proof PDF files.
I understood that to open a customers file and not do text edits, but to generate a valid PDF using their fonts was not a breach of agreement, but that if I used that font for text edits, or other jobs then it was breach of the agreement.