Fontspring Joins Dribbble and Creative Market

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  • Die in-dryfoun
    Die in-dryfoun Posts: 27
    Would you agree to rent a house or work at a job under a contract with a clause such as "Section 22"? Don't sign anything like that without proper legal advice or you will regret it later.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,135
    James Puckett said:
    FWIW I’ll be happen to accept the updated agreement once a Notices section is added.

    Yes, that is an entirely reasonable position to take.
  • Jess Latham
    Jess Latham Posts: 43
    What I meant to say, when clicking the "acknowledge agreement changes" button, it's just that, you're acknowledging the changes. You don't need to agree to the changes. If you are on the platform then you've already agreed to any changes.

    What should be in the agreement is a section that states that you can leave this agreement at any time and also that this section of the agreement must remain in every future agreement, unchanged.

    There's a button to push and it says you can leave this agreement at any time, but it should be in the agreement.
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,998
    Jess Latham said:
    What should be in the agreement is a section that states that you can leave this agreement at any time and also that this section of the agreement must remain in every future agreement, unchanged.
    That’s a great idea!
  • Justin Penner
    Justin Penner Posts: 65
    JoeManbeck said:
    @Jesse R Ewing "Using the Fontspring font uploader" seems really unlikely (at least in the near term), but your desire to improve that upload and management process at CM is something we will certainly share with them.

    Please do! Thank you. I tried to raise this when I first joined CM but it fell on deaf ears.

    For those who don't know, when you upload a font to Creative Market, you have to upload a .zip file that includes all the files you want customers to receive, and all customers receive the same .zip file regardless of whether they purchase a desktop, ebook, web or app license. I literally had to write a README file that states: Files for desktop, ebook, web and app usage are included in this package. Please ensure you've purchased the correct license(s) for your usage.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,436
    @Justin Penner
    I put the WOFFs in a folder titled web fonts (only for use with a web license).
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,998
    @Ethan Dunham any chance the agreement will be updated to at least address the notifications section problem?
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,998
    @Ethan Dunham the agreement still lacks a notices section. Do you plan on adding it?
  • Jess Latham
    Jess Latham Posts: 43
    I guess this is going to be a good test to see how quickly the new team responds to our concerns. I'm assuming this isn't the sort of thing that Ethan can handle any longer, am I wrong?
  • Die in-dryfoun
    Die in-dryfoun Posts: 27
    edited February 2022
    If there is something that font distributors hate, is to have their agreements discussed publicly. We should do it more frequently.
  • Ethan Dunham
    Ethan Dunham Posts: 25
    The last couple of weeks have been a blur and my 15 yo daughter was just hospitalized last night with blood sugar at 480. Life comes fast. This is still being discussed and appreciate everyone's feedback. We have noted a few errors in the agreement and will be releasing an update soon. More to come.
  • Ethan Dunham
    Ethan Dunham Posts: 25
    Thank you. She is still in intensive care but recovering. I’ve taken the next few days off. Will be back!
  • Jess Latham
    Jess Latham Posts: 43
    Ethan, I'm so sorry to hear that and glad to hear that she is recovering.
  • Ethan Dunham
    Ethan Dunham Posts: 25
    Thanks all for the concern for my daughter. She is doing great and managing it as well as a 15 year old can. I am still a little swamped from the flu ripping through our family and getting through the transition, but did not want to leave this thread hanging the way I did.

    I feel like there is confusion about what a Terms of Service agreement is. I am not a lawyer, but this is my understanding of how it works: Fontspring, a service-provider, allows foundries to use our e-commerce platform to sell their typefaces. We are providing a service that has a legal contract guiding our behavior and our users'. Our willingness to host a foundry on our platform and a foundry's willingness to be on our platform are the "conditions" for the contract.

    Part of the contract says that we reserve the right to make changes. It is reasonable to reserve some flexibility to stay operationally healthy and nimble.

    That said, we recognize that not everyone will agree with changes we might make. Therefore we committed in the agreement to notify our users (based on the information they provide to us) when a change to the TOS occurs so that they can review and decide on their continued participation.

    Perhaps we change the agreement to say we won't notify foundries any more. That change would be a good trigger for a foundry to terminate and find another distributor.

    Perhaps we change the agreement to say that a foundry must provide 60 days notice to terminate. Another possible onerous trigger.

    That is the beautiful tension of the TOS. It is in our best interest to keep and nurture valuable foundry-partners because it is good for business. So we have to do things that maintain and grow foundries' trust. They hold leverage over us in their ability to walk out the door. We are just one distributor of many.

    Would you agree to rent a house or work at a job under a contract with a clause such as "Section 22"? Don't sign anything like that without proper legal advice or you will regret it later. 
    I disagree this is a helpful comparison. Rental agreements with landlords and tenants are highly regulated for good reason. Labor law, likewise is also heavily regulated. While we appreciate the idea that Fontspring could be so central to a type foundry's business, that is far from true. Many foundries thrive without any distributors. We are just one tool of many that you can choose to use, or not.

    Jess Latham said:
    What should be in the agreement is a section that states that you can leave this agreement at any time and also that this section of the agreement must remain in every future agreement, unchanged.
    I get this sentiment, kind of. The truth is that even if the termination clause was removed in a subsequent revision, you would still have the legal right to terminate the agreement. US courts would never allow a service provider to manipulate a TOS to keep a customer from terminating.

    Jess Latham said:
    I guess this is going to be a good test to see how quickly the new team responds to our concerns. I'm assuming this isn't the sort of thing that Ethan can handle any longer, am I wrong?
    It has always been a team effort, but sure, the team is a lot larger now. And lawyers. Looking. At. Everything. ( Except this post. :) )

    Those of you on our platform with ongoing concerns are welcome to dialog here in the open (no I don't hate it at all), or contact me directly. ethan@--

  • JoyceKetterer
    JoyceKetterer Posts: 813
    I'm also not a lawyer but the suggestion that you need to say "we can amend the contract at a later date" in order to be able to do so in a mutual way is preposterous. Parties to a contract can always amend it.  My understanding is that the reason you put into the contract is so one party can do so unilaterally.  
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,234
    Fontspring, a service-provider, allows foundries to use our e-commerce platform to sell their typefaces.
    And framed in that way a service terms of use contract defined by the service provider seems like a reasonable and appropriate thing. There is another way to frame the business relationship, though, which is that the foundry, a manufacturer, allows Fontspring, a distributor, to sell their typefaces. In which case, I would expect the terms of distribution rights to be defined by the foundry and either accepted or not by the distributor.
  • Ethan Dunham
    Ethan Dunham Posts: 25
    John Hudson said:
    There is another way to frame the business relationship, though, which is that the foundry, a manufacturer, allows Fontspring, a distributor, to sell their typefaces. In which case, I would expect the terms of distribution rights to be defined by the foundry and either accepted or not by the distributor.
    Absolutely true. Some foundries we distribute have custom terms we agreed to in order to have the right to sell.
  • Justmytype76
    Justmytype76 Posts: 11
    I thought I'd wake this thread up again, many things have changed since it was discussed. Fontspring does now take 50% royalties, as do most platforms now. Creative Market is adding all fonts currently on their website ( and all new uploads from now on)  over on to Fontsprings platform, seemingly without giving shop owners the choice. Interesting times. And I wonder if that ' Notices section' ever was added to the contract agreement? Perhaps @JoeManbeck can tune in to whats happening over there. 
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,436

    It's intriguing to observe the strategic move of using Fontspring's capabilities to address the limitations of Creative Market. Creative Market's current model restricts the sale to only full font families, lacking nuanced tiers for embedding licenses. Additionally, the absence of separate web/desktop zip files for customer delivery is a notable oversight. This approach potentially limits revenue for both the foundries and Creative Market, as it relies heavily on the customer's honesty in purchasing the correct license type.

    I'm curious to see the direction this transition takes. It raises questions about the ultimate goal and the end point of this gradual change. Does anyone have insights or predictions about what the final outcome might be?

  • JoeManbeck
    JoeManbeck Posts: 26
    edited November 2023
    @Justmytype76 @Ray Larabie
    Thanks for asking. 
    We are in the process of moving all Creative Market font products to Fontspring, starting with foundries that have accounts on Fontspring, followed by foundries that aren’t already on Fontspring.
    Simultaneously, we currently have developers working on “breaking apart” the existing font families on Creative Market with goal of being able to sell both families and fonts (as opposed to just families, as Ray pointed out), allowing more granular license tiers, and providing the correct file formats for each license type (which CM is unable to do today), almost exactly the experience foundries and customers already have on Fontspring. @Ethan Dunham is directing this work and we plan on releasing the first stage soon.
    After this initial font selling infrastructure is in place on Creative Market, our plan is to bring the rest of the Fontspring font library to Creative Market, opening those products up to the 5x traffic and customer account figures on CM. 
    And our ultimate end goal (for fonts at least) is near parity between our two Creative Market owned sites, creativemarket.com and fontspring.com, both in library and in font-selling apparatus. For now we’re planning on doing the heavy lifting of syncing submissions from one site to the other.
    As for the Notices section (how we can contact a foundry), it has been added to the agreement, but not in the way you might be thinking. As a team we worked to integrate the core pieces of the Fontspring Foundry TOS into the Creative Market Shop Terms and on May 1, 2023 we adopted that updated CM Shop TOS. This is now the standard agreement between CM/Fontspring and our foundries.


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