A ? about fonts and public domain

[Guest wems]

okay, so let's say I was to make a bg pp and I used words on it. Could I put the words in whatever font I wanted from who knows where and then sell that pp for profit? Are there specific fonts that I can use and others I can't? How do I know if a font is considered public domain? What are font rules for copyright purposes?

I've been driving myself nuts with this question for about a week and decided "HEY! Ask the ScrapGirls! Ro and Jennia know EVERYTHING!" (<-no need for the dalai lama.... LOL)

Wendy

[Betsy]

This is a pretty hot topic, and one we've been discussing for a while here. There are Commercial Use fonts which were created for just this purpose. there are free Commercial Use fonts, but they are few and far between, generally hard to find and almost never quite the font you were hopig for.

Free Commercial Use fonts do exist, you just have to do your homework. Ray Larabie's fonts are all Commercial/Personal Use OK - so you can use them. Other font makers would like an e-mail or a postcard or a small donation in return for the use of their commercial fonts.

[Betsy]

Oh, and just because you find a font for free (say on dafont.com or wherever) does NOT make it copyright free and you DO NOT necessarily have permission to use it commercial. Just a pet peeve of mine - people seem to think if they can download it for free they can use it however they want.

[Guest Melissa]

I keep track of all my fonts in terms of what I can use commercially and what I cannot. That way when I'm designing for sale I ONLY look at what I can use and I'm not even looking at stuff I cannot use. Creating Keepsakes for instance are fonts you can buy but YOU CANNOT use them as part of anything for sale. I've heard that CK will prosecute.

But like Betsey said there are some free commercial fonts and there are also quite a few fonts for sale that are not that expensive and have commercial rights attached! Most of the time the site you're buying it from (assuming your buying of the net) will have a link somewhere that explains what rights you're buying when you buy them.

[Guest JenniaHart]

Most fonts will have a readme.txt file with them that will tell you the "rules" for each font. I collected a list of sites that have fonts that are OK for commercial use and put it on my personal website [url="http://jenniahart.com/fonts.htm"]fonts[/url] until we can create a database of these fonts for us as ScrapGirls and for public use also.

You will find the the terms of use for each font vary widely. My favorite one is the one that asks you to send in a payment for commercial use based on your zip code, height and shoe size!!! There are quite a few fonts out there that are postcardware- meaning that if you want to use them (in the manner specified which often does include commercial use) you need to send a postcard of a horse (or something similar) to the font creator or the font creators child, etc.

I recently bought one of the HUGE Art Explosion packages because they have AGFA fonts *and* after reading the software terms VERY carefully, I determined that creating papers for ScrapGirls (or other means of sale) was within the licensing agreement/ terms of use. The clip art has over 100,000 images but honestly the reason I bought it was the 1800 (I think) AGFA fonts. (Please don't ask me the exact date that I bought the software and if I have installed these 1800 fonts yet, or even ONE of the 1800 fonts yet, because I'll plead the 5th!!!)

I did a TON of research on thisjust in the last 6 months or so and I'm glad to share anything I can to help. I'm one of those people who doesn't see any sense in all of us re-inventing the wheel!!!