What is the copyright of fonts and pictures? Industry insiders will give you a popular science.

Two recent headlines have brought the issue of intellectual property protection to the fore again. I believe everyone has heard of it.

One of them is that Founder and ADOBE claimed more than 30 million yuan in infringement fees from a certain company, which led to large-scale layoffs of the company.

The other is that Visual China "owns" the copyright of the black hole pictures, and then collects copyright fees from major companies.

For a while, the copyright issue of fonts and pictures came into the public's attention again. On the one hand, everyone accused these companies of being "immoral", and on the other hand, they were suffering from the increasing cost of using these things.

As a veteran who has been in this industry, this article provides some useful knowledge for everyone. (There are benefits at the end of the article)

First of all, let me talk about two misunderstandings that most people have:

1. Chinese characters are a cultural heritage shared by all Chinese people. Why can these people charge for it?

If you are a designer yourself, you should know what the problem is and where it is.

But for people who are not in the design industry, there are not a few people who ask this question.

The problem with this question is mainly:

Confused the definitions of Chinese characters and fonts.

Chinese characters are indeed a language symbol that everyone can use. For example, for the word ren, anyone who writes this character will write it with one stroke and one stroke. One stroke more or one stroke less is not the word for human being.

However, fonts are based on Chinese characters, and font designers have re-created elements such as strokes, vision, and structure to give Chinese characters different visual effects.

You can also understand it as: fonts are the clothes of words.

There are various styles of clothes, sexy style, business style, cool style, frigid style and so on.

Let me give another example that everyone can understand.

Some herringbone is beautifully written, we will say that this person's handwriting is very "body", what is "body", it means that this person's handwriting is very stylish. All the characters seem to be in one style.

In fact, everyone's handwriting can be a font. Fangzheng has also developed many personal handwriting fonts, the most famous one is this one - Fangzheng Jinglei font, which is the handwriting of the famous movie star Xu Jinglei.

Everyone can use Chinese characters, but fonts are protected by copyright.

Second, the font is made up of various strokes with software?

There is a reason why font licensing is expensive. Because the development cost of a set of fonts is not low.

Fangzheng Youhei, a team of 10 people, took 3 years to complete the development.

The headline of Pangmen Zhengdao, a set of fonts independently developed by the designer Amen, cost more than 100,000 yuan out of his own pocket.

So why do you say that fonts are not made by patching together strokes with software?

For a set of fonts, to ensure that the overall style is consistent and beautiful, the designer must make individual adjustments to each character.

The font design of the font library has the following guidelines:

1. Strokes in different positions have different shapes

2. Keep the center of gravity of all characters on a horizontal line, otherwise it will give people the feeling of jumping up and down

3. The whiteness between font strokes should be equal

None of the above work can be replaced by software, so it must be done manually.

So how many Chinese characters does a character library contain at least?

6763.

This is still the smallest font library, and for some large font libraries, it may contain tens of thousands of Chinese characters.

You can think about the human time cost behind it.

Next, let's talk about the "pit", which pits do you accidentally fall out of?

1. Microsoft Yahei is charged for commercial use.

Many merchants were complained of copyright infringement. After searching for a long time, they couldn't find any words that used Fangzheng's characters. Finally, they found out that it was Microsoft Yahei.

Microsoft Yahei is also Founder? !

That's right, this may be the only Founder font that comes with the Microsoft system, and there is still a fee for commercial use.

Microsoft Yahei, in 2004, Microsoft commissioned Founder to design a default Chinese font for Windows Vista. Moreover, it is a huge sum of money. How big is it? Each character costs $100. This character is actually Fangzheng Lanting Black. After Microsoft bought it, it was renamed Microsoft Yahei.

It is worth mentioning that:

Microsoft only purchased the right to use this word in the Windows system, which can be used for text display and printout in the system. However, Microsoft does not cover the authorization of commercial advertisements, and it is still necessary to find Founder to obtain authorization.

Therefore, this may be the biggest pitfall in the font. Because most people have never thought that the fonts that come with the Microsoft system will be charged for commercial use.

However, it is said that the previous news has also alarmed Microsoft. It seems that Microsoft will also take action to solve this problem, but there is no clear progress yet.

Second, most of the fonts that you think look good are not the ones that come with the computer

Many people will say that when I use the computer, these "charged fonts" are already in the computer, and they come with the computer.

As mentioned above, the fonts that come with Microsoft after leaving the factory, especially the Chinese fonts, are very limited, and there are basically no very artistic characters. If there is, it must be pirated software that comes with it, or someone installed it before you.

Tips: How to identify paid fonts

When major font manufacturers name their font products, they generally use this format: font manufacturer + font name.

For example, Fangzheng Lanting Hei, Han Yi Shangwei handwriting, etc.

If it is a font with such a name, it is basically charged. (Of course there will be several free ones, which we will mention later)

Third, do not download fonts from some messy websites, they will not be responsible for your infringement

Many small websites publish the fonts of some font manufacturers on the website for people to download in order to attract traffic and obtain income. But it will not tell you that you need to be authorized for commercial use! This is one of the important reasons why many people think that "fonts are free".

If you obtain these fonts through the official channel of the font manufacturer, you will be prompted to authorize the scope of your use.

It is generally divided into personal version authorization and commercial authorization, personal version authorization, and now major font manufacturers have opened free download channels, and everyone should be able to get a free version of the personal authorized version of the font trial on the official website.

Before using a font for commercial use, be sure to check whether it is free for commercial use. If it is not free, communicate with the font manufacturer first. The same is true for pictures. It is best to find pictures in commercial galleries and use them after obtaining authorization (some free commercial gallery websites will also be provided later)

4. Different font names do not mean non-infringement

Many people will come across fonts released by counterfeit font manufacturers. These manufacturers just take the font library of other font manufacturers, change the name or a small part of the glyphs, and then release them. The most typical one is the "mini font" I don't know if you have seen it.

For example, you are using a mini xx font, but this font is actually exactly the same as the square xxx font. That is also infringing.

why?

Because the judgment standard for font infringement mainly depends on whether the fonts are consistent. Non-professionals may think that all fonts are the same, but professional people can tell at a glance. If the consistency of the glyphs reaches a certain percentage (as I remember, it seems to be 90%), it can be judged as an infringement.

So someone asked me before, to what extent can I change the font and glyph before it is considered non-infringing?

Answer: Changed to the point where even his own mother doesn’t know him.

Since the fonts and pictures cannot be used casually, is it a matter of being helpless as a company or a designer? How should we respond?

1. Be aware of copyright

Although many people may think this is nonsense, but still have to remind. After all, be careful sailing for thousands of years.

The promotional materials used in commercial activities must be carefully checked. In particular, many companies like to outsource the design. Once the outsourced designers do not have this understanding, the final liability for infringement will still be borne by the company. For any design material used, try to determine whether it is free or licensed.

One more thing, to obtain the authorization of the enterprise, it must be through the official channel of the copyright owner enterprise. Generally, it is necessary to sign an authorization contract with the enterprise sales. Of course, some font manufacturers have entered the Ali service market now, where they can obtain authorized applications from the store.

In addition, attention needs to be paid to the scope of authorized use. For the authorization of fonts and pictures, different media have different authorization prices. This must be considered when determining the authorization plan. If you only authorize the use of online channels, you actually use it offline, which is also regarded as infringement.

2. Use free commercial fonts and pictures (the method of receiving is at the end of the article)

Because the use of font images often poses the risk of copyright infringement, and the price of genuine licenses is really high, in order to benefit enterprises and designers, many organizations and even individuals have launched free commercial fonts. There are also some websites that specialize in providing free commercial photo material.

Font articles:

In fact, there are quite a few fonts that are free for commercial use. Here are a few of the more commonly used ones. There is not much introduction to the remaining fonts, you can get them after the article.

1. Siyuan HeiTi, Siyuan SongTi

It is a series of open source fonts developed by Google, which are free for commercial use. Among them, Siyuan HeiTi can be said to be the closest to Microsoft YaHei among the free fonts. It can be used as a substitute for Microsoft Yahei.

2. ZKU series fonts

It is a series of free commercial fonts developed by Zcool, and there are several types available.

3. The title body of Pangmen Zhengdao

A free font for headlines developed by designer Amen. It has been widely used in recent years, and it may have something to do with Amen's personal influence. Of course, the font is still very nice and does work well for headings.

4. Alibaba Pratt & Whitney

A free commercial font newly developed by Alibaba.

5. 45 Huakang fonts (free commercial use only on the Alibaba platform)

Huakang has cooperated with Alibaba and authorized 45 fonts to Alibaba Group for use by its merchants on Taobao, Tmall, and Alibaba platforms.

Picture articles:

Websites where you can get free commercial images:

Basically, they are all foreign websites, so the disadvantage is that you need to search in English

Well, that's all for today's content, so how to get the above font benefits?

Find our official account and reply to "fonts" to get all the fonts mentioned above~