Fonts and commercial use

You are free to use anything that comes with MacOS X. You can even market custom solutions that depend on resources such fonts that are found on every Mac. You may not, without some other type of license agreement, make a copy or redistribute any of those resources.

From the Lion license agreement:

F. 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.

You're welcome.

Yes, you really have to watch for rights embedded in fonts. You can use them for pretty much anything you want when you're just printing stuff off at home. But when it comes to commercial use, ya' gotta watch 'em. 🙂

Luckily, the fonts Apple provides are pretty open for commercial use. If there is a restriction, it's usually that you must embed the font rather than sending the font itself along with the project.

Hi Kurt,

I know this is an old article but I've been looking for an answer to my question and I think you can help me.

I do a lot of commercial work for clients who print t shirts. I want to use apple installed fonts (optima) to create a piece of art for my client.

The end product would be an outline/manipulated version of Optima having used Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator. Do I need to purchase the Optima font from someone else for this use or am I ok to use the installed font in this type of use? I've looked everywhere online and can't find a specific answer in this regard. It seems as though the big deal is in redistributing the fonts and embedding. Something I don't even have to worry about.

Thanks in advance,

Oskar

If you do a Get Info on the font, this is part of the copyright notice:

The digitally encoded machine readable software for producing the Typefaces licensed to you is now the property of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG and its licensors, and may not be reproduced, used, displayed, modified, disclosed or transferred without the express written approval of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG.

Which if I'm reading it right, is a long way of saying you can't copy the font data itself (the outlines) and modify or otherwise distribute them. However, I can't find any usage restrictions. If there are any, they should by listed in Font Book when you highlight that font.

I want to use a font called Trattatello by James Grieshaber.

The fontbook info says:

Copyright (c) James Grieshaber, 2005. All rights reserved.

ription

I've spent half an hour on the web trying to find somehow to contact @JamesGrieshaber with no success. This site doesn't even list Trattatello:

http://www.identifont.com/show?5M6

You just wouldn't think it would be that hard.

So **** frustrating! Off to find a freebie @ http://www.1001fonts.com/free-fonts-for-commercial-use.html

Copyright notices like that generally just mean that you can't claim to be the creator of the font, or slightly modify it and claim that to be something you created.

Restrictions are separate from copyright. If there were any specific things you couldn't use the font for, it should be stated in the notice.

Expand on what you mean by "free for commercial use."

Wow, that's really good sleuthing, Kurt!

I was looking all over the place!

😎

Wow, that's really good sleuthing, Kurt!

Nah, not really. I looked it up for someone a few months ago who also wanted to know what they were allowed to do with OS X's supplied fonts.

Thanks for the reply.

When you say usage restrictions, which ones are they? Is it these:

Enabled Yes

Duplicate No

Copy protected No

Glyph count 268

Enabled Yes

That would be it (the top two). So there are restricitions (Enabled: Yes). Does it say anything about what the usage restrictions are?