Recent font legal disputes (or cost savings)

KP Mawhood

I'm updating our list of font license disputes that have reached major news media outlets (largely thanks to @Thomas Phinney). I'm struggling to find disputes, but I am finding a number of articles wherein megacorps are "saved from licensing costs" by commissioning/creating a font.

• Netflix creates new font to save ‘millions’ from licensing costs: “According to multiple media reports, the new font will enable Netflix to save “millions of dollars a year” as it moves away from Gotham, the font it is currently licensed and one that is widely used in the entertainment industry.”
• IBM has freed itself from the tyranny of Helvetica: “Until recently, it was spending over a million dollars each year to license Neue Helvetica for the company.”

What other examples, or more recent license disputes (post 2015), have been published?

Existing list:

• My Little Pony toymaker sued over alleged font misuse – BBC News

• Illegally Used Font Could Result in Lawsuit for British Government

• Mixpanel sued for $2.0 million over font in shared Tumblr theme

• Madrid 2020 paid 1,500 euros to the designer whose font used without permission

• NBC Universal sued for $3.5 million for font license infringement

• Rick Santorum’s Website Using Pirated Font Leads to $2 Million Lawsuit

• Microsoft sued for $1.4 million for font copyright violation

• TBS and Titleboy Films sued for font license infringement for Falling Skies promotional materials

• Harry Potter and the Dangers of Font Non-Compliance

JoyceKetterer

Thanks for posting this.  I've seen the articles about avoiding licensing costs.  I think it's clear we as an industry are accumulating bad PR.  Ug

Mike Wenzloff

All the Extensis links are dead.

Kent Lew

Why am I getting "Domain Not Found" for all the links to blog.extensis.com?

Cory Maylett

JoyceKetterer said:

I've seen the articles about avoiding licensing costs.  I think it's clear we as an industry are accumulating bad PR.  Ug

I would argue that it's good PR.

These articles and cases help get the word out that it's illegal to use most fonts without, first, obtaining licenses to do so, and that it's not all that different from using photos, music, books, video or other kinds of software.

It's good when the public is shown that font piracy is real, that we take it seriously and that legal penalties can come from ignoring this. I think most people, when it's spelled out to them, agree that it's not at all unreasonable for people to be paid for their work. There's not a whole lot wrong with PR that results in some respect.

JoyceKetterer

@Cory Maylett  anything that scares potential game changingly large customers off is definitively bad PR.  

Cory Maylett

@JoyceKetterer — When large companies commission their own fonts to avoid licensing issues, I see as much opportunity there as I do drawbacks. 

One clear advantage to this kind of publicity is the public realizing that the common practice of copying, distributing and illegally using fonts comes with real risks.

On the whole, a net positive.

JoyceKetterer

@Cory Maylett  We all loose if the retail market goes away or becomes perceived as only for those who can not afford "better".  The passive income of retail sales beat the limited commodity of our time which we sell when we do exclusive custom projects.  

Cory Maylett

@JoyceKetter — There's not a whole lot of passive income coming in from millions of copies of illegally used fonts either. I think we'll just need to disagree on this one.

JoyceKetterer

@Cory Maylett : 

First, violating a contract is not quite the same as breaking the law, so how about not throwing around the word "illegal" haphazardly?

Second, my goal is to sell retail font licenses to the largest range of people possible.  If all the entities with deep pockets are afraid to use a font that has a license I loose.  But not just me, our industry looses.  

I can work with license violators.  I can't work with people who refuse to engage.  I think you're being very short sighted.

John Hudson

When large companies commission their own fonts to avoid licensing issues, I see as much opportunity there as I do drawbacks. 

Customers opting for custom fonts rather than licensing existing fonts is part of a diverse and healthy type industry, but it ceases to be healthy when custom fonts are reported as saving the companies 'millions of dollars annually'. I am not aware of any licensing situation that involves such sums.

James Puckett

FWIW, Jonathan Hoefler disputed that Netflix was paying millions of dollars a year in licensing fees.
“It’s worth noting that Jonathan Hoefler, founder of the Hoefler&Co type foundry that designed and owns the Gotham font, says that the company has “never quoted a client anything close to a million dollars for anything.” He adds, “most of our clients find that they’re better served by licensing an existing font than creating a new one, and cost is a major factor in that decision.”
– http://thenextweb.com/tech/2018/03/21/netflixs-sleek-new-typeface-will-save-ton-money/

JoyceKetterer

I definitely disagree that no one ever pays in the range of 1 Million dollars for a font license - even a timed one.  And my bet is that anyone who says otherwise is parsing very carefully in order to justify their answer. 

@Dave Crossland, where's that picture you took of the pricing on myfonts if you dial everything up to the max? 

I would note that these same companies pay millions for all sorts of other licenses without blinking.  It's just what happens at scale.  And if your only reason for commissioning a font is to avoid having a license then that's not a sufficient reason to make a new thing.  The issue here is that they a) under value fonts b) are afraid of the font licensing because our industry has fail to instill trust.

Cory Maylett

JoyceKetterer said:

@Cory Maylett : 

First, violating a contract is not quite the same as breaking the law, so how about not throwing around the word "illegal" haphazardly?

I can work with license violators.  I can't work with people who refuse to engage.  I think you're being very short sighted.

No contract exists when people use and distribute pirated fonts, which is a considerably bigger concern of mine than a corporation running afoul of its existing licenses. Using illegally obtained fonts comes with both criminal and civil penalties.

You seem to assume there could be a large rush by many major companies to commission their own in-house, privately owned fonts that they will use to the exclusion of everything else. Honestly, I just don't see this happening on a scale that will make an appreciable difference. What I see, instead, are far more companies paying more attention to and being more conscientious about their licenses and policing their fonts.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I sold a license for several thousand copies of a font family to a large company. They have dozens of different products — each with its own standardized branding. They will always need licensed fonts in addition to their corporate face.

And so what if a handful of huge, billion-dollar companies, like IBM or Netscape, commission an in-house face for their corporate branding. I'm not at all sure I'd rather see, say, Monotype getting the revenue for their corporate typeface licenses than I would an individual designer being paid up front for a custom design. And I'm also less than convinced that avoiding licensing issues is typically these company's only (or even primary) reason for wanting a unique typeface anyway.

Speaking of shortsightedness, I can't see where it's anything but shortsighted to think that articles informing the public about the legalities, penalties and risks associated with using or distributing fonts without a valid license to do so is a bad thing. Apparently, those foundries and distributors filing these lawsuits aren't too concerned about it either.

Even when the issue is a civil suit against a corporation for a licensing violation, articles in the media about it drive home the message to the public (and businesses) that designers need to be paid for their work, which as I've said, is an unambiguously good thing.

Matthew Smith

@Dave Crossland, where's that picture you took of the pricing on myfonts if you dial everything up to the max?  

It appears that the image you are looking for can be found in this thread: (In your opinion, what are the key advantages for an exclusive corporate typeface?).

While Dave calculated $3.7 trillion to license Helvetica, he also wrote:

Say Acme Client Co is going for 6 styles of Helvetica. They are going to call Monotype's friendly sales team, along with URW (Nimbus Sans) and Font Bureau (NHG) and work out a custom offer from each vendor, and write a check to the vendor who is most competitive.

They are not going to punch in the details to myfonts.com and charge their credit card with 3.7 trillion dollars.

Dave Crossland

Makes the Democratic Socialist budget look like a no brainer lol

KP Mawhood

John Hudson said: … 'millions of dollars annually'. I am not aware of any licensing situation that involves such sums.

John, I'd really query this. I've heard of vast annual sums in the hundreds of thousands. It would not surprise me if a large media business, such as Netflix, with cumulative licensing requirements, would be subject to these costs. If a finance dept also codes hefty legal fines against font license spend, the overall costs for a large organisation could exceed ~$1M/year.

JoyceKetterer said:

The issue here is that they a) under value fonts b) are afraid of the font licensing because our industry has fail to instill trust.

I'd agree with both of these. It can feel like senior managers are playing a game of cat-and-mouse. On the one hand, a business might "hide" parts of their font misuse whilst simultaneously working towards an alternative. There's a widescale lack of knowledge and understanding, hence (1) devaluing the font product, until a business is subject to legal fine = (2) distrust, because it's very difficult to manage the font permissions of a business with multiple, poorly tracked, divergent, outputs… worldwide.

Who wants to own that risk?

John Hudson

Katy, to be clear, I wasn't talking about overall font licensing fees incurred by an organisation, but fees related to a single font family.

Eris Alar

As a customer who commissioned a custom family for my (large) non-profit workplace, one reason was because the lack of understanding about font licensing in the general public meant that if we had full rights to a family then all our users could use it without having to worry. We also paid a small fee for the family, as the designer was happy to do a lot of the work pro-bono, and work within our budget. From memory we only paid $3000, and the family is 5 weights with italics.