The Font Licence Nobody Checked

What you actually bought

A font is licensed rather than purchased, and the licence describes specific permitted uses.

The common categories are desktop use, which covers installing it and using it in documents and print; web use, which covers embedding it in a website; and separate licences for applications, products, and broadcast.

Those are sold separately, priced differently, and a business that bought one frequently assumes it holds the others.

Which produces the most common violation in this area: a font bought for desktop use, uploaded to a website, and served to every visitor.

Where small businesses run into it

• A desktop font self-hosted on the website.
• A font that came with software, used elsewhere.
• A designer's licence treated as yours.
• A subscription font used after the subscription ended.
• A font in a logo, where some licences restrict it.
• A font file passed to a signwriter or printer.

The third is worth dwelling on. A designer using a font under their own licence to produce your material does not thereby license you to use it, and once they hand over files you may be using something you do not hold.

Webfont licences are metered differently

A detail that surprises people who have bought one.

Web licences are frequently sold by monthly page views, in bands, rather than as a single perpetual right.

A small business is usually well within the lowest band, so this matters less than it sounds, and it matters when a site grows or when a licence was bought years ago for a smaller site.

Some are perpetual for a fixed traffic level; some require renewal; some are tied to a specific domain.

Check which you hold, since the answer determines whether anything needs doing when the site changes.

Subscription fonts end when the subscription does

The one that catches businesses out most quietly.

Font services included with a design subscription license the fonts for as long as the subscription is active.

Cancel the subscription and the right to use them ends, including in material already produced and in a logo already in use.

Which means a business that had a logo made during a subscription, and cancelled it afterwards, may be using a typeface it no longer licenses.

That is a reason to convert a logo to outlines at the point it is made, so the finished mark no longer depends on the font file, and to note which typeface was used in case it is needed again.

A worked example

A business had a site built using a typeface the developer had licensed for desktop use, uploaded to the server and served to visitors.

Nothing happened for three years.

The foundry then contacted them, having detected the font being served from their domain, and quoted the web licence fee that would have applied.

They paid a smaller settlement and switched to an openly licensed family with a similar appearance.

The developer had not intended anything improper and had simply used the file they had.

The lesson the business drew was that nobody in the chain had ever asked which licence covered what, and that the question would have taken one email at the start.

The simple way out

For anybody who would rather not manage this.

Openly licensed font families are free for commercial use, on the web and on the desktop, and include a great many good typefaces.

They can be self-hosted, which is also better for privacy and for loading speed than pulling them from a third party.

For most small businesses that removes the entire question at no cost in quality, since the range available is far better than it was a few years ago.

Keep a note of which family you use and where the files came from, since open licences still have terms and knowing the source is part of complying with them.

Paying for a typeface is a legitimate choice where it genuinely distinguishes your material, and it should be a decision rather than an accident.

Check what your site is serving

The audit, which takes about ten minutes.

Look at what font files are loaded when your site opens, using the developer tools in any browser, and note the names.

Compare that against what you have licences for, which for most businesses is an uncomfortable comparison because no licences exist at all.

Ask whoever built the site where the fonts came from and under what licence, which is a reasonable question and one a competent supplier will answer.

Do the same for anything a printer or signwriter holds, since font files passed on to a supplier are a form of distribution that most licences restrict.

Record it with the rest

Since this belongs with the other specification details.

Note the typeface names, where they came from, what licence covers them, and any renewal or traffic limit.

Keep the licence documents themselves in business storage rather than in an individual's email.

That is what makes the question answerable in three years when somebody asks, which is exactly when nobody remembers.

It also prevents the situation where a business pays twice for a licence it already holds and cannot find.

The counter-case

The practical risk to a very small business is low.

Foundries generally pursue larger users, and the usual outcome for a small business is a request to buy the correct licence rather than anything worse.

There is also a version of this that becomes paralysis, where a business avoids using any typeface it did not verify and produces material that looks like a default.

And plenty of small businesses have used a licensed font incorrectly for a decade with no consequence at all.

Use openly licensed families by default, ask the question when somebody supplies a font, and keep the paperwork where the business can find it.

The check

1. List the fonts your site actually loads.
2. Ask your developer where they came from.
3. Check desktop against web licences.
4. Check whether a subscription is still active.
5. Convert logo type to outlines.
6. Prefer openly licensed families.
7. Store licences with the brand specification.

Step three is where the common violation lives, since a font bought legitimately for documents is frequently the same file uploaded to a server.

How fonts affect loading is covered in fonts loading from three different places.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.