I'm not sure if this message should be located here, or in the printing industry, but I figure I should start here.
I work for a commercial printer, and we would like to start accepting PDF documents from our clients and the general public- then print, and possibly mail the documents. For example, a small dentist may want to mail a letter or invoice to his/her clients. The issue that I have run up against is the legality of printing fonts. It appears that in many instances, font vendors/creators (Microsoft and Adobe included) may provide a font with the product that was sold (such as Word) but only allow that font to be used and printed on the machine the product was purchased for.
Some vendors state a font can be used in certain ways, but not for commercial printing, unless the commercial printer has a license. For example, from fonts.com EULA, it states:
"14. You may take a digitized copy of the Font Software used for a particular document, or Font Software embedded in an electronic document, to a commercial printer or service bureau for use by the printer or service in printing such document but only if the printer or service bureau represents to you that it has purchased or been granted a license to use that particular Font Software."
The facts are that we would not purchase any fonts/licenses for our servers, especially given the wide range of fonts, costs, etc and the number of servers these files could pass through before they are actually printed. Furthermore, it seems that many font vendors/providers have similar EULAs.
Does anyone know what would make it legal to print via a PDF document? How have companies like Fedex/Kinkos avoided huge lawsuits in this matter? Are there previous legal cases to establish a basis from?
The print industry (he says carefully) mostly ignore all this and pass all liability to the client in their own T&Cs, as they assume that the font vendors won't bother pursuing small cases, and if they did they'd go after the person who agreed to the EULA (i.e. the client, not the printer). See the last para of the FedEx T&Cs "copyright" section here:http://www.fedex.com/us/office/customersupport/terms.php
If someone was sharing the font files on a website, that's a different matter - but copies essential to the day-to-day use of the typeface that are only passed as embedded data are difficult to exclude from an agreement (though as you've seen, some still try!) In that sense there are billions of "illegal" embedded copies of fonts floating about at any one time, as almost nobody ever reads the EULAs, but I can't remember the last time anyone was served paper for using an embedded copy of a font without permission.
One of the difficulties is in the way a typeface can be protected. In some countries, it can be copyright (and therefore the embedded outlines are de facto an infringing copy, hence a criminal issue), whereas in other countries a typeface is classed as utilitarian and not subject to copyright, in which case the embedded outlines only break the EULA, a domestic civil issue with the original purchaser. I'm not saying a civil case is any less of a case, but that it makes it unrealistic to pursue a breach worth a couple of dollars.