Hi all you wonderfully talented people!

Just wondering about commercial useage of fonts. Do you have to get a license from these font creators to sell an item with that font? If yes, what sites do you get these fonts from? I know I have one kit that uses lettering delights fonts, but I looked at their user agreement and it mentions you can't use their fonts for anything for sale. So I am confused on how this works. Are there fonts you can use in products for sale that do not require you purchase them? In other words, are there free fonts you can use for commercial purposes? Hmmm... obviously I am very new with this stuff!

Any help would be so much appreciated! Thank you!

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JEANINE

*BITS AND PIECES - THE BLOG*

I would be interested to find this infomation out also.
I read the terms that come with the free fonts, most of them do say you can't use them in items to sell.

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Dani B.

My Gallery!
My little Blog

It all started with rubber stamp companies, mainly... and now has spread to card making & sb'ing, paper and digital.

To try to answer your question, what me and DH had to do was send out letters in writing asking for permission to use fonts off cd's and dl's for profit. That way you also have something in writing back from the company if anyone ever decides to say you can't do that, and try to sue you.

Hint: This is why I have every CK FONT CD ever made. They were very nice & honored about the fact that I wanted to use their fonts to make cards, sb pgs, etc... You just (like in any other situation, really) have to be sure to give them Full credit... ie: "CK Font CD, Special Occasions, CK Heritage" on your product you are selling. This actually works as well with papers, stickers, stamps... any of those things used for paper crafting.

Hope this all makes sense & helps you out!

Sincerely,
-Shawna

I had actually heard just the opposite about them, that they would file a lawsuit against you if you were selling a product using their fonts - this warning came from a digital scrapbook store owner, and made perfect sense to me.

PC Crafter allows you to use their fonts on products for sale, as they do with their Creatables, however, they disallow you to use their work on digitally downloadable products, the product has to be COMPLETE and PRINTED, not a digital file, because they limit the number of uses per image in their collections.

Commercially licensed fonts are usually around $20 and can be purchased from places like "My Fonts" dot com - Ronna Penner's fonts are there, the ones that are on the Alphadoodles CD as well as her others before Alphadoodles came out. If you want to use her fonts on digital scrapbook products you are selling, you have to buy the commercially licensed versions. Bummer that I bought my collection before the other fonts were released, but oh well, I have most of her fonts with a commercial license.

Fonthead Designs sells commercially licensed fonts, in packages of 8 to 20 for $35 - he states that he would rather you not contact him to ask if you can use his fonts on resale items, THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE BUYING A COMMERCIAL LICENSE FOR - however, if his font is ALL that your design is, you must contact him. For example, if you are selling t-shirts with only the letter F on it, and it's one of his Fs, then you would need to contact him. I think this is more applicable to his dingbats...can't imagine making anything that was just one letter and calling it a design.

There is some grey area concerning commercial fonts and "alphabets," since you are in essense selling each letter...but it it's embedded in another design, it's part of the design, not THE design.

Words and phrases leave less grey area because they are already put together, which is what type designers are selling fonts for anyhow, completed type works.

When in doubt, it's best to contact the font designer. They're real people - I have contacted Ronna before and she got right back to me and was very clear with her explanation of commercial vs. the non commercial versions of her fonts!

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Sending the letter is a great idea. It shows you have done "due dilligence" on your part.

From my understanding, in order to use fonts in your artwork (that you sell) you have to have a commericial license....which usually is expensive. This is the main reason I rarely use title art in my kits that I sell.

Try checking out www.dafonts.com and see what they say--I'm pretty sure they sell commercial licenses.

FYI-
Roseanne

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Roseanne

232 digi layouts so far in 2005 Avatar by Hunibuni!!
"Creative expression is at the root of one's physical and emotional well-being"

I just checked this site, and here's what they say;

Licensing Options

Standard User License
A Standard User License is issued with individual font purchases. It licenses a font for use on up to 5 CPUs and one(1) printer within an organization. The Standard User License is best suited for individuals and small organizations or in instances when only a limited number of individuals will need access to a desired typeface.

Font Embedding, Streaming and Web Server License
These licenses are for commercial publishers or web designers who wish to use fonts in ways beyond the scope of the Standard User License. For example, to embed fonts into eBooks or other commercial products, to embed fonts in websites that allow for content editing, or web servers that use fonts in their end user applications. For complete information on these Licenses, go to www.fonts.com/embedding.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really make any mention of using fonts in artwork.

Hope that helps somewhat...
Roseanne

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Roseanne

232 digi layouts so far in 2005 Avatar by Hunibuni!!
"Creative expression is at the root of one's physical and emotional well-being"

I have a "Copyright Permission Request" that came from the CK website, I had to submit it to them... And then they returned it to me signed by a CK staff personnel, saying Permission Granted under the following conditions, that I mentioned previously for credit to be given in full detail...

So, not sure why she would be told that, other than mine is for actual Cards, and SB pgs made manually one at a time. I make these and sell them in my local area at craft fairs and the type. Maybe that's the difference...

I didn't inquire specifically about digital reproductions. So that is probably why... only manual reproductions??? I mean, naturally I still have to print the fonts onto the card stock I'm using though.

But I don't by any means, claim to be an expert in this area, either...

Sincerely,
-Shawna

Great research! It seems as though the main issue in their terms is redistribution of the font as a whole.

I think if you are selling kits, let's say, that uses a font, you should probably read the terms and possibly contact the designer and/or purchase a commercial license. I think if you are making a single work of art for yourself and posting it in the gallery, that's not a problem because you are not disseminating the font for redistribution.

Abuse of terms of use for fonts is common. Just like with web design and scrap design, it's so easy to download and download, and not so easy to remember to give credit or follow terms of use. On the other hand, I get very frustrated at the number of fonts (and other digital items) that do not come with readme files. If you are concerned about these things, make sure the site you are downloading from is reputable and includes the readme files whenever possible.

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Dianne Rigdon