Zapf Humanist Font, Optima and Ottawa

[Blue Ghost]

So, I'm debating whether the free version of Zapf Humanist is legit or some unlicensed pirate font that'll get me in trouble if I use it in something I'd like to e-publish. The alternate is of course to use one of the knock-offs for my Traveller stuff.

 

[toddaroo]

Worst case, the owners of Zapf Humanist contact you and require you to purchase a copy if it is not legit. Best, and most likely case, no one will contact you and it is a worry for nothing.

 

[FreeTrav]

Most foundries won't find it worth it to try to nail you for USING a knockoff or pirated copy of their font; if you try to sell the font itself, on the other hand, that'll provoke them.

It's almost impossible to trademark or copyright the appearance of a font; any enforceable IP rights are generally held to apply to physical/electronic media that provides an accurate representation of the font. Most foundries realize this; that's why you can get clones of popular fonts, and nothing stops them from being released in the first place - Arial was an intentional (professional) clone of Helvetica, and nobody went after Monotype (I think) or Microsoft (who contracted for it) for doing it.

One way that foundries make money on their most common fonts is to MAKE them common, by licensing them to software publishers such as Microsoft or Corel to include in graphics or office suites, or even as "Core OS fonts". Thus, damn near everyone has Arial and Times New Roman today, and most of those who don't have Helvetica and Times Roman instead.

Offhand, I'd say "don't worry about it" - if you've got an Optima or ZapfHumanist font, or a clone of them, go ahead and use it for your Traveller stuff - provided you're NOT doing it in a way that would have you tripping over Trade Dress issues.

(Freelance Traveller uses ZapfHumanist for our masthead and heavily for titles throughout the magazine; we avoid the Trade Dress problems by using full-page cover images instead of the solid black that has come to signal 'Traveller'.)

 

[Blue Ghost]

Well, I better splurge on the $100 licensing when it comes time to publish. Thanks for the feedback.

I guess my real question was if I had a legitimate free copy or not. That answers that.

 

[Thunderbolt]

The properties dialog of the font in the Control Panel applet will probably give you a good idea.

I have several fonts I've bought from Linotype which generally sport either their copyright or that of Monotype. The cheap freebie fonts seem to have the authors name but not much else.

I think a potential tricky area is embedding fonts in electronic documents like PDF. Like FreeTrav says, if it is part of an image you'll be fine, but rendering text using an embedded font is probably where you could get into the redistribution minefield.

 

[FreeTrav]

The properties dialog of the font in the Control Panel applet will probably give you a good idea.

I have several fonts I've bought from Linotype which generally sport either their copyright or that of Monotype. The cheap freebie fonts seem to have the authors name but not much else.

I think a potential tricky area is embedding fonts in electronic documents like PDF. Like FreeTrav says, if it is part of an image you'll be fine, but rendering text using an embedded font is probably where you could get into the redistribution minefield.

Even embedding the font isn't necessarily going to be a problem; it depends on the TYPE of embedding. TTBOMK, there are three kinds:

Partial embedding: Only those characters that the document needs are included in the document. This type of embedding is not going to be a problem, and may well be the default for documents not intended for editing by the recipient (e.g., PDFs).

Read-Only/Non-Installable/Editable embedding: The entire font is included, perhaps to allow the document to be edited by the recipient. In general, not a problem, because the recipient can't actually USE the font except in the document in question. This SHOULD be the default embedding model for documents intended to be edited by the recipient, e.g., word processor documents - if the program supports font embedding at all (many low-end word processors, like Works or WordPad, don't).

Installable embedding: This is the one that's the potential problem - it allows the recipient of the document to install the font on his own system, and use it just like any other font. Installable embedding is arguably 'distribution', and if the license for the font doesn't permit it, you'd be in violation. There are supposed to be ways of marking the font so that it is only embeddable as Partial or R/O, but it's actually somewhat hit-or-miss as to whether software that embeds actually honors that setting. This should NEVER be the default, even if the font allows it.

 

[Thunderbolt]

Jeff,

Very useful info.

I must try the OSX print to PDF option and see what happens to special fonts, as this was how I thought I might create PDFs myself.

Presumably if that doesn't work, these options are available in Acrobat Pro?

 

[Blue Ghost]

What's the font used for the actual writeups? It looks like some kind of Arial.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Anyone? Arial?

 

[Thunderbolt]

I remember somebody saying the body text is Univers.

 

[FreeTrav]

My eyeball said that it was Akzidenz Grotesk, but Arial, Helvetica, Univers, A.G., Verdana, Tahoma, et cetera, are all sort of at the bottom end of the Sans-Serif metafamily, and some confusion is not unlikely.

But I believe that the statement of it being Univers came from One Who Can Be Presumed To Know - Loren, in this case - so I'll take it as read that it is Univers.