If you are a US Citizen the wavier on Fonts gets fuzzy. It is true that the government has mandated FONTS ARE FREE. Now that said... the reason...
That was said when the relatives of Frank Goudy decided to sue people using his font in the publishing world. Never mind that Goudy had been dead for over 70 years and his estate had NEVER made a dime on the fonts previously.
Went to the supreme court of the US and they declared FONTS ARE FREE.
No one can charge you for using a font because that would impinge your use of the word written in the font and THAT would be restriction on freedom of speech and expression.
(VERY OVER-SIMPLIFIED)
But what about business??? Do newspapers HAVE to pay for using Times New Roman?
no.
There are common use fonts and there are decorative fonts.
Business does not have to PAY for common use fonts...
common use fonts have been vaugely defined but NOT listed to give lawyers a chance to make more money somewhere else down the road.
Decorative use fonts are a font of another color.
It all comes down to advertising.
If a business uses a decorative font in an advertisement that is printed in the paper WHO PAYS???
Does the newspaper that printed the advertisement have to pay because they printed the font? Does the business ahve to pay for having the font in its ad? Does the Imaging Agency have to pay for creating an ad with that font?
And nobody knows...
No one has won a suit like that yet (to my knowledge in the USA not even in tree hugger California) and probably won't. Most fonts are not truly copyrighted.
It is expensive to copyright truly and the old Postal Mail copyright only works if you never test it in court.
Just putting a (c) around your font design does nothing.
I say use what you will, no one can prove ownership of a font you downloaded from the internet. That is why the true SAMPLE fonts have missing characters as HOSTAGE; but not for long.
That was said when the relatives of Frank Goudy decided to sue people using his font in the publishing world. Never mind that Goudy had been dead for over 70 years and his estate had NEVER made a dime on the fonts previously.
Went to the supreme court of the US and they declared FONTS ARE FREE.
No one can charge you for using a font because that would impinge your use of the word written in the font and THAT would be restriction on freedom of speech and expression.
(VERY OVER-SIMPLIFIED)
But what about business??? Do newspapers HAVE to pay for using Times New Roman?
no.
There are common use fonts and there are decorative fonts.
Business does not have to PAY for common use fonts...
common use fonts have been vaugely defined but NOT listed to give lawyers a chance to make more money somewhere else down the road.
Decorative use fonts are a font of another color.
It all comes down to advertising.
If a business uses a decorative font in an advertisement that is printed in the paper WHO PAYS???
Does the newspaper that printed the advertisement have to pay because they printed the font? Does the business ahve to pay for having the font in its ad? Does the Imaging Agency have to pay for creating an ad with that font?
And nobody knows...
No one has won a suit like that yet (to my knowledge in the USA not even in tree hugger California) and probably won't. Most fonts are not truly copyrighted.
It is expensive to copyright truly and the old Postal Mail copyright only works if you never test it in court.
Just putting a (c) around your font design does nothing.
I say use what you will, no one can prove ownership of a font you downloaded from the internet. That is why the true SAMPLE fonts have missing characters as HOSTAGE; but not for long.