Apple - New validation process to use fonts in apps?

Rudy

Hi all,

You may have noticed a new process announced by Apple at the beginning of October and related to their validation process to embed fonts into apps : https://developer.apple.com/documentation/technotes/tn3214-validating-the-fonts-you-ship-in-your-app

It's mainly about a technical process to check if fonts are compliant with their requirements in terms of encoding, readibility, etc.

There is also a licensing aspect : "If your app bundles or redistributes a font licensed to Apple, the font will fail validation". 

Could this be interpreted to mean that if a third-party foundry has licensed a font to Apple, and that font is made available through Apple’s ecosystem for developers to use, the app publisher would not need to obtain a separate app-embedding licence from the foundry?

Any feedback and interpretation is welcome.

Thanks, Rudy 

John Hudson

I think this is a space-saving measure by Apple, avoiding duplicated data in app packages for fonts that are available via system resources. I’d be interested to know if they test they are using also checks the version of the font embedded in the app, which potentially might be different from the one licensed by Apple.

If the font is not embedded or redistributed with the app, but only calls the system installed app, then no separate app-embedding license would be required anyway: the app would be just like any other piece of software installed on the system that uses system resources.

Ben Kiel

It’s pretty clear at the end of the doc that this is a check against rebundling fonts availble at the OS level:

FontValidator identifies a font Apple designs or fonts licensed to Apple by content markers in the file. Sharing a name with one of these fonts, such as your own build of a face you licensed independently, doesn’t trigger this error.

See: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/technotes/tn3214-validating-the-fonts-you-ship-in-your-app#103-and-104-The-app-redistributes-a-font-Apple-designs-or-licenses

Rudy

Thanks both. I agree on the technical bit.
On the licensing aspect, and to illustrate the point, if one of your fonts is licensed to Apple and made available through its ecosystem, can an app developer use it without needing a separate licence from your foundries? That's the point I want to understand clearly. Thanks!

Floor van Steeg

Apps can always use the fonts that are distributed by the system. Just like users can use system fonts in Pages to create a document. The tech note only applies to embedded font files, i.e. font files included in an app bundle.

[IANAL, this is no legal advice] For licensing see the EULA section 2.E.:

E. Fonts. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you may use the fonts included with the Apple Software to display and print content while running the Apple Software; however, you may only embed fonts in content if that is permitted by the embedding restrictions accompanying the font in question. These embedding restrictions can be found in the Font Book/Preview/Show Font Info panel.

An app can use the system font Helvetica, according to the macOS system license. An app can use an embedded Helvetica, if it has a separate embedding license provided by the foundry. An app cannot embed a copy of the system font Helvetica.

Rudy

I got all of that, and you’ve all confirmed what I suspected. If a foundry licenses a font to Apple, it potentially loses out on individual app licensing opportunities. But it all depends on the relative size of each opportunity: licensing to Apple versus licensing to individual users. ;-) Thanks, all!

Thierry Blancpain

Apple would create a separate build of a font like that, and include their own watermarking (“content markers in the file”) that they’d use for this. This would not be the case for a foundry-distributed version of the same font.