Protecting Fonts

A client wanted to
use a distinctive font for a company logo and asked whether the font was
copyrightable and whether use of the font in the company logo was
permissible. It sounds like a simple
question but it quickly got complicated.

While fonts themselves
are not copyrightable, the software that generates fonts and typefaces can be
copyrightable. This is the rule of law
for the United States only.  Fonts may be copyrightable under the laws of other countries.

I quickly concluded
that the relevant question for my client was one of “licensing.

What many companies
do – especially software companies – is license rather than sell their
products. Licensing allows companies to
tighten their control over their products. Hence, we don’t really own the computer software we purchase. We license
the right to use it and our use of the product is controlled by the licensing agreement.
Most fonts are licensed – and not sold. One restriction in many font licensing agreements is sharing the font with
anyone who does not also have a license to use the font.

This requires
exercising caution when using copies of fonts obtained from a font exchange
website. While I can not speak for all
font exchange websites, the few that I have evaluated do not check the
copyright or licensing status of fonts before accepting them for posting – although
they do have a statement that they will remove a particular font if the owner
comes along and makes an objection to inclusion of the font on the forum. I hazard a guess that many of the fonts
appearing on forums are posted without the authorization of their
creators.

I recommended to my
client that it obtain a properly licensed copy of the font before incorporating
it into a company logo to be disseminated widely. After making a few inquiries, it turned out
that the font in question is included in a variety of commercial software
applications. Fortunately, my client already
had a license for one of the software programs with which the font was
bundled. The basic program license
agreement included the right to use the font to create documents and graphics –
including a company logo. There was no
need for my client to obtain an additional license for creation of the logo.

I love happy
endings.