Legal concerns regarding fonts

Can I distribute a game with a copy of a TrueType font that came with my computer if I incbin the font first?

Thanks for your time and Happy Holidays!

Miss Blitz

Probably not. Can't say for sure without knowing the fonts, but I can't think of any which are generally installed on a computer which you could distribute freely. IncBin'ing certainly doesn't make any difference.

Fonts have the most absurd licensing imaginable. You're better off finding fonts which are genuinely public domain or a similar very generous license. Otherwise, there are so many loopholes and technicalities they try to get you on.

What Gabriel said. Either find a PD/MIT license font, or buy one (from Blambot or something).

Ah! Thank you both very much!

One other point it's near useless just googling for free fonts, free commercial use fonts etc because you'll end up giving yourself a headache. What you think is free is not. What is shown as free for commercial use end up not being. So many technicalities everywhere for free fonts that make using them risky because you're always left wondering "What If".

Best like Flameduck says, chump up the cash and buy a font whith the license you want then you know you're completely covered.

Or you could make your own bitmap font and use FonText..

I think BRL made their own TT font for their IDE text, Blitz.fon

Amon is right, so many you think are free then it turns out they are not free for commercial use etc.

Incbin is a naughty way of hiding the actual ttf file (like moleboxing) but if someone checked your binary they might be able to prove their font was in it (totally unlikely but...). It's the ttf "code" that is copyright not the actual image, that's why people make bitmap fonts and use those. Besides they are faster to draw. It's what I do.

Are you sure? I would think you have the copyright on the style too, unless the bitmap is too low res to be compared or has been heavily modified. After all if you rasterize a font and only then use it for a game, it's still commercial use of the intellectual property.

If you're looking for free fonts, check out aenigmafonts.com
All made by one very prolific individual, and he has a ton of fonts available for download there that are free to use, including for commercial use.

Anyway, as far as spreading fonts is concerned: They are a bit of a legal oddity. The catch is that a truetype font is technically considered to be a program, not an image. The system renders and scales the font based on instructions in the file.
That gives the ttf file the same copyright rules as any other program.

There is a loophole, though: from what I gather, Under the US rules a typeface is not copyrightable. (ancient rule, to protect the printing business from getting sued into oblivion).

From the wikipedia article for 'typeface':


In short: A 'font' is the program with instructions on how to draw the letters, a 'typeface' is what the printed letters actually end up looking like.

Based on that: you can't just include any TTF with your program (since you would essentially be bundling someone elses software without permission), but it's perfectly OK to use 'copies' of the printed font (as in: a bitmap or JPG of the letters) -- as long as the font is not too unique.

Of course the rules may vary in other countries...




Especially since piracy is completely rampant in the fonts-business. There are a ton of websites that claim all their fonts are free, but more often than not they are actually commercial fonts that are copied from elsewhere, often (but not always) with the original copyright info still included. Just because they used a few "5,000 free font"-CD's to populate their website doesn't mean that whoever sold the CD's actually bothered to check that the fonts were in fact free.

In my experience the majority of the 'free' fonts that you find online are in fact copyrighted commercial ones.

That's complete madness... So, if you created some code to draw fonts, EXACTLY like arial for instance, that would be legal?

There are many free fonts on http://www.dafont.com.

For every font it says at the right hand side of the screen whether it is "Free" or "Free for personal use". Sometimes there are text files included in the downloaded file that have more precise information about whether the font is free for commercial use.

Or you can follow the links to authors' websites (sometimes visible next to the font name) to see what they have to say about it.

Ross: That's my understanding, yes... Because at least in the US the Arial typeface cannot be copyrighted, just the individual TTF that generates it.

It's on Wiki. I checked all this out several years back.

All this information about font images not being copyrighted is way out of date, and no longer true. The US courts have recently made several judgements that font images *are* copyrightable, and simply making a bitmap font of a copyrighted font is no protection. In short, a bitmap image of a font is considered an alternate font format, because of what you use it for, and you still owe the font factory whatever license fee they asked for.

In german you would say: "Wo kein Kläger, da kein Anwalt."

If you can't make a bitmap what the hell are fonts for? Surely you're allowed to use fonts you own?

They're talking about fonts you *don't* own/didn't pay for commercial usage...


That's realistic. Also, I wonder what would happen if the author of the font also copyrighted a printed version of it as well...

Either way, I don't consider honest behaviour to use commercially a rasterized version of a font for which the author clearly requires a fee in the license file just because you think to be legally covered.


I wouldn't say that, since most fonts as you can read in the license files are distributed freely by the author for evaluation / personal use, and only require a license for commercial use. Of course the author implies that you'll buy a commercial license if need be. However, as a rule I would avoid using a font for which there isn't either a license file or an official website with the license.

But surely that could not apply to fonts that are free to use commercially (even if not to redistribute), since creating a bitmap of text in that font is precisely that kind of use? If the right to use does not include that, then what?

Well, when you use a font *in any way* you necessarily rasterize it. I'm sure Gabriel only refers to cases of people not paying the license of a font, being sued, using the rasterization as a defense and finally losing the cause.

That depends on your definition of "own". If you bought a license which permits redistribution of the font, then of course you can redistribute it as a bitmap if you prefer. What you can't do is buy a license which only permits you to have the font on one machine or ten machines and then distribute a bitmap font to hundreds/thousands.

Essentially, distributing the bitmap font is the same as distributing the font itself.


The key element is whether you've created an alternate font format. If you use that font to create an image or several images, not a problem. You can redistribute those images. What you cannot do is then chop the image up into characters in memory and use them to display text in a game. Not unless you have a license which permits font distribution. As far as the foundry, and to some extent the law, is concerned, it's still a font, not an image if you can use it to print text on the screen.

Frankly the only font guy I know who really understands how fonts should be used and how to license them properly is Ray Larabie. I've discussed the issue with him in email and he is only too aware of how bad the big font foundries are with this issue. I can say quite categorically that if you use one of his free fonts or if you license one of his pay fonts, you'll be fine. With anyone else, read the fine print really, really carefully and ask questions. Ever since the courts started changing their tune, the big font foundries have really been taking advantage, and the price of their redistribution licenses can be huge.

So it's okay to create eg. menu images for a game in advance using the font, but not okay to save some space by only saving each letter once. Man, the guys making copyright law have been idiots.

What? Surely that depends on your perspective? The guys making copyright laws are absolute geniuses! Imagine if you will having designed a font back in the 70's which you'll be able to make royalties off for the rest of your natural born life! Awesome! If I'd been born back then, and had any lettering skill at all, I would have totally done the same thing.

Here's the wiki page on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface (scroll down to Legal Aspects)

It doesn't mention bitmap fonts but does mention a court case about the points on a font's outline. So maybe that scuppers the bitmap font crew, but maybe NOT. Google shows up this: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/1849

http://maradns.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-it-is-good-you-can-not-copyright.html (of course this is just ones person's opinion)

There's more if you care to search. I'd like to see evidence the other way now to prove that you cannot use bitmap fonts.

distribution infers a transfer of possession. possession infers ability to use. so wouldn't it follow that by embedding the font makes it unusable outside of your application. in turn, making it so you don't require a distribution license any more than a book would.

obviously, you still need to fulfill any other license requirements.

an example of where a distribution license would be required are word processing apps and paint apps where custom fonts are installed with your application. where the user than has the ability to actually use the fonts themselves.

This sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Unfortunately, there are a ton of contradictory laws on the books, and a lot of things all of a sudden don't apply anymore for whatever reason as soon as things go digital... So who really knows.

If you write a program for windows, and use a font that comes with windows, then you know that your customer has a legal right to use the font. I would think you would be safe using any font that came with windows.

You're safe to use it, yeah. You have to be prepared to just take it on trust that they'll have it and not distribute it yourself though. If some dink has deleted all the fonts in their font folder to save 1/2 meg of hard drive space, you'll just have to live with it. I'd think it was 99.9% safe though.


Your conclusion fails because your premise is incorrect. It's not use outside of your application that's the problem, it's your use inside the application. Distributing the font gives you the ability to do things you can't do without distributing it. Let's be honest. If it didn't give us something, we wouldn't do it. That's what you're being asked to pay for.

Now if you want to argue that what they're asking is unreasonable and ridiculous, I'm right there with you, but the fact is they are asking, and Judges are currently giving it to them.

I think you missed my point and if your's was true then why would anybody buy a non distribution license since we wouldn't then be able to create a functional work using that font.

Are you telling me that if I create a movie using a font I purchased a valid license for, I would also need a distribution license for the font if I make copies of my movie?

fonts have use licenses and often distribution licenses. if I buy a font to use that means I get to use it for things other people will view. there is no license that I'm aware of that says you can use it in your documents but nobody else can view those documents in any form.... the point of the distribution licenses is so that you don't give the font away with your application in a way that allows others to use the font without paying.

embedding and distribution are different... that's why they are separately described. I bought a font for my use, that gives me the right to use that font in my work... be it a book or an application.

microsoft specifically states it's fonts are embeddable into word docs, pdf files, etc... Adobe does as well... in almost all cases this is for view and print and many allow edit within the document as well. how is that any different than embedding the font into the application.

Now, as I said in my first post, you generally still have to abide by what the license says you can and can not do with the font. it comes down to the definition of distribute and that's not what we are doing so we don't need that license but we still need a license (for non pd fonts). specifically you should be looking at the embedding language in the license.

No. Where did you magic this up from? Nothing I've said bears any relation to movies or books. Your original comment was purely about applications, and so was my reply.

Still, I can pick out a few things in your (all new) information, which I would respond to.


Yes, they also make it very clear that this is purely for documents, so your addition of "but applications aren't so different from documents so it must be alright" is clearly a stretch.


Actually, Adobe are one of the few big companies who "appear" to have a healthy attitude toward the use of their fonts. I say "appear" because what I've read from them would suggest that they wouldn't mind you creating bitmap fonts out of their fonts. However, despite emailing them several times, I have been unable to get any answer from them when I try to confirm this.


And again, for most font foundries, you're wrong. I have long emails from several of the major font foundries which quite specifically state that it doesn't matter whether the font is embedded or not, retrievable by others or not, but if you distribute that font in any form, rasterized or not, if it's a font format, you need a distribution license. If you're so confident I'm wrong, write and ask the font foundries. In fact, I'd highly recommend that anyone in any doubt do exactly that.


I have no idea what you're doing, or what you need, but you're giving others some really bad advice while attempting to convince yourself of what you do and don't need.

I know how these threads always go. Someone offers good advice. People who are worried they have or are about to make mistakes try to convince themselves that it's wrong, and so on and so forth. I really couldn't care if you believe it or you don't. I have the emails to prove it, and I'm not going to be paying anyone else's legal fees if they ignore it and don't ask the font copyright owners for absolute assurances.

Given that this has been a big issue for me, and that it's caused me a lot of problems, I would feel bad if I didn't offer the benefit of my experience to hopefully save someone from making a very expensive mistake. Not bad enough to keep coming back and arguing over and over though. Argue. Believe. Investigate. Research. Email. Ask. Ignore. Bury Head in Sand. Entirely up to you, because I'm out.

Did you run in legal problems then from distributing fonts?

How do you not accidentally make a bitmap font that looks similar to an existing one? I'm sure most common styles people think of have been made/copyrighted? Does it have to be a per pixel perfect match to qualify as copyright violation?

But even if they say you need to pay, that won't actually prove anything other than that they like money.

Just because you ask someone "Do I need to pay you if..." and they scream "YES!" at the top of their lungs doesn't mean that that answer has any basis in law or would be enforceable. After all, they have a vested interest in having you pay.

I'm not saying that they aren't right, but you can't necessarily just take their word for it. For comparison: Any movie company loves to ignore the existence of "fair use" altogether, but people using movie clips can still be protected by the fair use provisions of copyright law regardless of whether the movie industry likes it or not.