Monday, November 23, 2009

A Word About Font Copyright

All of the fonts on FIG come from free font sites such as Dafont. Most, but not all, are licensed "free for non-commercial use" or something similar to that in a text file that is part of the download. You can use the fonts here for personal projects, blogs, etc. without much concern.

If you decide to use an image created on FIG in a commercial way however, you need to check the license of the fonts you're using. In many cases, a license fee, attribution credit, or some other action is required to compensate the font author for commercial use.

Here's an example of commercial use... You create an image on FIG, put it into a t-shirt design and then sell the t-shirts at CafePress. Another one might be if you compose clipart using font images made on FIG and then sell the clipart on a CD.

US Copyright law places the burden on the user to make sure they have rights for the intended use of a font. The fact that a font was available on FIG doesn't matter. Laws outside US may be different so check locally.

You can download and read the license file by going to the download site for that font. Click the button on the right-hand toolbar when the font in question is the current font.

Some fonts do not include a text file in the download. FIG assumes these to be free for non-commercial use. For commercial use however, you need to figure out who the author is and contact them directly to find out about rights. If you can't establish rights, its best to pick a different font rather than to receive a cease and desist letter from an author's attorney.