EULA question - mobile devices

Eris Alar

I just licenced some type and spotted this in the EULA:

2e.) Output Devices: The Font Software may be used with a maximum of five (5) output devices per licensed computer. However, the Font Software may not be installed or used with any device that displays a reproduction or facsimile of the Font Software or the designs embodied in the Font Software. This includes, but is not limited to: game playing devices, game of chance devices, mp3 players, electronic books, or mobile phones or other mobile devices.
All such uses are not permitted installations and are not authorized output devices/uses under this License. Any such installation or use requires the purchase of a special license.

Does this mean I cannot install the font on my Kindle for personal use? Equally, on my iPad to us with design apps? (I have to admit I've not properly explored adding additional typefaces to my iPad, but it is something I want to explore in the future as I do more using it) I would have thought the iPad counts as a device the same as another laptop etc. 

JoyceKetterer

@Eris Alar From a technological standpoint, you probably can't install the font on those devices anyway.  The way you'd get the font on those devises is via a cloud service.  Does the EULA say anything about cloud use?

Without reading the rest of the EULA, my best guess is that the point of this language is probably to prevent large scale installations for corporate purposes (including app embedding).  If I'm correct, the language is awkwardly written.  I've been there with other clauses in my own EULA.  The foundry probably knows it's confusing and is planning to edit it in the next round of EULA edits.  If you ask them there's a good chance they will tell you their intent wasn't for it to effect an end user at all.

Christopher Slye

Yes, IMO the license is poorly-worded and suggests unintentional restrictions. I mean, from Day 1, desktop fonts are installed and rendered on screen as a “reproduction or facsimile.” That’s how you use them!

I know some foundries want to license installation of use on an iPad as a separate use, but my personal preference is to include it in a basic desktop license. These days, people use fonts with software on a variety of computing devices, and I don’t think it makes sense to make distinctions. There are ways to get a font onto an iPad for use there if one really wants to.

I think there is still some confusion in thinking about fonts that are distributed along (embedded) with mobile apps, versus a font that an end user installs and uses for their own purposes. I can’t tell from this EULA language here if it’s meant to prohibit both.

Eris Alar

@JoyceKetterer on the Kindle you just plug the device into a computer and there is a fonts folder you drag font files into. It’s really easy. I use Fern Text by DJR and it is a delight on the epaper screen. 

Getting them on to iPad I think you are right, but I have not fully explored it, but I see more and more apps I use now supporting text, so it makes sense someone will find a way to install more type. 

I will reach out to the reseller I got the font from and double check EULA. 

Eris Alar

@Christopher Slye as things blur for me as a user, where I jump from MacBook Pro to iPad and even to iPhone, for creative work, I feel these issues need to be looked at. 

Selfishly, I wish it was user based and not device based. For example, I own and use 4 devices regularly (MacBook Pro, 11-inch iPad, 12.9 inch iPad, and iPhone). And I’m considering using a second desktop set up as due to my work having a dedicate workstation for some specific tasks makes sense. 

I also have a couple of older machines I don’t work on seriously, but I boot them up ever so often and am thinking about how to use them in some way. It’s unlikely those uses will need fonts installed, but being my old machines they probably have fonts installed which I never wiped off. 

JoyceKetterer

@Eris Alar ask whoever issued the license.  If the reseller didn’t write the license you can’t count on their answer 

Eris Alar

Thanks 

John Butler

Custom fonts work surprisingly well on a Kindle Paperwhite, though a few have squirrely-looking hinting. It's much easier to install them on Kindle hardware (it's basically a USB storage drive, and you just drag them into a folder on it then reboot the Kindle) than in the Kindle app on an iOS or Android device. Incidentally, the Palatino bundled with Kindles appears to be Palatino Nova.

Font EULAs should not trifle with what OS any given device is running. A computer is a computer. I regard my Kindle as just another PC, not an “output device,” so if I have a 3 PC license I would simply count my Kindle as one of the PCs.

Florian Pircher

For iPad, you don’t necessarily need a cloud service. Apps like Fontcase (which I use) or AnyFont work well with regular font files.

JoyceKetterer

@John Butler. I agree.  But, have you ever written a EULA?  It's really really hard to describe some things.  After our last major rewrite I went to a conference where @Bruno Maag and @Thomas Phinney took me aside to tell me that our description of the kind of permitted uses (not embedded) didn't make actual sense.  We sat down, some others joined us, and it took a couple hours to write something that was both technically correct and nominally human readable (pun intended). 

I'm pretty sure that the clause in question is only accidentally forbidding an end user from directly installing the fonts.  Again, I don't know who's EULA this is so I've not read the whole thing but that's how this excerpt reads to me.  I admire their creativity in the way it was written.  The risk of creativity is always unintended consequences.  

PS - I knew that you could use your own fonts on a kindle but since I don't have one I didn't know the procedure.  Thanks for explaining.  

Eris Alar

I did not want to name the foundry or reseller as my intention was not to name and shame. 

As a user, I have a utopian wish that all EULA’s were identical and easy to parse. But I realise that is an unfair expectation because different designers and foundries have different goals, and there is huge variance in markets, so what makes sense in one market does not in another. 

John Nolan

Really, you're best off asking the vendor to clarify their intention.

But I don't think naming the vendor is out of line, unless they indicated that the EULA was confidential.