I'm doing a project for a client who
potentially wants to do a full buyout of the typeface. So not only do they want full unlimited exclusivity, they want to make the font their intellectual property.
From what I've understood through my contact to their legal department, they don't want to be tied up to any one designer for future adjustments, and want to be able to alter the typeface however they like.
So I'm looking at a situation where I might have to give a price for a full buyout of the typeface which—as it stands—consists of two weights (no italics) and a basic Latin 1 character set.
How would you go about this? What kind of thinking would you apply when coming up with a number? Never been in this situation before & struggling to come up with a number.
Thanks

Kasper
Comments
How much commercial potential does/did it have other than for the client?
Have you already negotiated a price that includes exclusivity, or do you already have a standard price adjustment for that?
Do you like doing extensions and tweaks, and charging for them, or do you find that unexciting?
Personally, I am happy to do tweaks and extensions. And your typeface sounds reasonably basic or barebones, with plenty of room for more work. So, if I already had an “exclusive” rate, I would take the exclusive price and add 25% to it to make up for the lost future work.
If you have never done an exclusive project before, you might double your rate for exclusive. Or at least add 50%.
Alternatively, you can look at the entire thing as work-for-hire and try to ensure you get a really good hourly rate.
Whether those particular rights include rights the client is concerned about is another question—and again might depend on the jurisdiction. I for one would not be surprised by if “the right to be recognized as the creator of the work” was perhaps not an element of “making it their intellectual property” that this client cared about.
Perhaps it involves 120% more work—italics and some language extensions. You think there is a 50% change of each part happening. So that’s (1.2 × 0.5
Or just add some fixed amount, probably in the 10-25% range.
Leastways, those are the ways I would go about it.
Thanks a lot for the breakdown!
I'm just wondering if it shouldn't also cost something to "buy" the freedom they get by being able to just do whatever they want with my work – and potentially make a complete mess of it. There's a sense of pride that's to be considered here as well
My take on this is that whenever you are selling your IP you should be charging a premium, regardless of whether you think now that the fonts don't have much commercial potential. Remember, when you sign away ownership of the fonts you are also signing away the right to make any derivative fonts. And yes, you're giving someone else the right to mess up your work.
We have a Transfer of Rights agreement that we use in these cases, in which the designers retain the moral right to be identified as the designers, and in which we retain the right to speak publicly about the project and to use the font ourselves in promotional and teaching situations.
Since you're not charging them a huge amount already, I would be comfortable doubling that to include transfer of rights. If they're serious about wanting to own the fonts and understand the value of what they're getting, they shouldn't balk at that.
Another option would be for the contract to give you “right of first refusal” for future enhancements. The contract could allow them to discuss future enhancements with other people, but it could ALSO require them to also discuss it with you before they actually contract anyone else to enhancements, and give you the option of doing it for the same amount of money they negotiate elsewhere.
That at least gives you a shot at doing enhancements, but does not lock them into working with you if your pricing is higher.
Thanks so much for the enlightening comment!
Turns out the client was mainly concerned about me having the right to sell/distribute the font to someone else in the future and they'd feel more safe by owning the IP. Even if we had a full exclusivity agreement in place. Will see how this develops. For now, I've suggested an additional 100% for a buyout, like you suggested.
@Thomas Phinney
I would actually prefer if the client bought the copyrights. They'd most likely still work with me in the future and it'd be good money ;-) but things are sort of veering towards them sticking to the original plan with "just" unlimited exclusivity.
Your note on "right of first refusal" makes a lot of sense!
We have a couple levels. At the lowest level we are still involved, we vet the plan and the contractor and do review of the final product. The fee paid at the outset is covering our time for those minimal tasks. At the highest level they can do whatever without approval but we have control over the naming of the files and if it's really terrible we can force them to pay for us to fix it.
We also make a strong distinction between modifications (swapping characters, adding a currency symbol, making minor changes), expansions (adding styles, new scripts, weights, etc) and derivative works (changing the look and feel of the exiting character set). Usually the last is forbidden.
We find that most clients who ask for this sort of thing are mostly worried they will need something we can't do - or can't do fast enough. We're small and they know that. What if we closed? They don't want to be stuck. So these assurances usually sort it.