What does it mean that, for commercial use of this font, &quot;a license is highly recommended&quot;? I intend to be running a web application in the browser for commercial use. The font I am considering at the moment is: Akzidenz Grotesk which can be downloaded for free provided it is for personal use. For commercial use, the website states: Akzidenz-Grotesk is totally a free font for personal use. No license, sign up or registration is required for your personal use. But in case of commercial use, a license is highly recommended or you can buy this font by clicking here. The confusing part to me is the wording: a license is highly recommended as if it is purely optional. When consulting the EULA at the website they are linking to their language is very clear that they are not joking about their license. For my purposes it seems that I need to resort to a Web Fonts License. The case seems pretty clear and cut to me that the website freefontsvault.com has erred in the details provided; but still, I would like to have some confirmation if there is something obvious I am overlooking?
When the site says &quot;a license is highly recommended&quot; I can think of one possibility. A web site can be so designed that it uses a particular font if that font is already installed locally, but falls back to some other font if it is no0t, rather than embedding the font. Since the font in question is provided free for personal use, those who individually download it could use such a site. The designer of a font holds copyright on it, and may license it under whatever terms s/he chooses. If a person wants to design a web site with this as an embedded font, then it must be licensed from the rights-holder on whatever terms the rights-holder offers or will agree to. There does not seem any option but to pay the licensing fee if this font is to be used in a commercial site or product. Using it without permission would be copyright infringement. The rights-holder could sue for damages. Whether it is worth paying that fee is a matter of judgement for the site designer. But there does not seem to be any provision making a license optional for a commercial developer.
Such clauses are called "copyright assignment", "invention assignment", and/or "works for hire" clauses, partly depending on the clause's intent and wording. They're pretty common in employment contracts for software development and some creative positions. Frankly, the clauses don't actually do much, at least in the US -- copyright law already recognizes the concept of works made for hire (which belong to the employer), and claims too far beyond that are often rejected if they aren't obviously related to company business. With that said, your hypothetical programmer's painting is safe unless it depicts, say, the contents of an email from the CEO. :) Even if the clause technically entitles the employer to claim ownership, the employer has no legitimate interest in doing so. Likewise, that app created outside work is safe as long as it is created using no company resources and is unrelated to the employer's business. If the app is obviously related, that's where things get hairy.
"Pastiche" is a literary, not a legal term, and as a professional coder, I would not use it to describe code that to some extent imitated other code. The legal question here is: is your code a derivative work of the code it is based on, and if it is, did you have permission to make that work. Copyright, in an Berne Convention country, which includes the EU, does not protect ideas and concepts, it protects expression. It protects the choices of words and symbols, and other forms of expression. If all you did was study example code, presented for educational purposes, and then write code that performs a similar function, using the same general techniques, then I don't think you have infringed copyright. That, after all, is why people post code to Stack Overflow and similar sites, to allow them to learn how to use specific coding techniques, including in commercial projects. I have used techniques posted to SO to do coding as part of my paid job. The usual test for copying under US law is "substantial similarity". This takes into account cases where there is essentially only one way to say or code something. I don't know the exact tests under the various laws of various EU countries, and they will not all be the same. But I suspect that on this point they are, well, substantially similar :). I can't advise on your specific situation. But if it is as described, I don't think you have a problem.
Exactly the same way it works over all other content There are no special classes of copyright, there’s just copyright. What a user of a service may do with copyright materials will be spelled out in the licence. If there is no licence, then they are left with fair use/fair dealing.
In the EU, software license resale is legal, even if explicitly forbidden by terms of any EULA or other contract imposed upon the parties. To quote the European Court of Justice's press release on its ruling in a case in Germany between Oracle and a German reseller, An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his `used' licences allowing the use of his programs downloaded from the internet. [...] The principle of exhaustion of the distribution right applies not only where the copyright holder markets copies of his software on a material medium (CD-ROM or DVD) but also where he distributes them by means of downloads from his website. Where the copyright holder makes available to his customer a copy – tangible or intangible – and at the same time concludes, in return form payment of a fee, a licence agreement granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period, that rightholder sells the copy to the customer and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right. Such a transaction involves a transfer of the right of ownership of the copy. Therefore, even if the license agreement prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of that copy. There are many such companies in the EU who resell software legally, including used OEM Windows licenses that are far cheaper than retail copies. This is, in my opinion, a fantastic thing -- but undoubtedly has been behind the trend towards time-limited licenses rather than perpetual ones, which we all arguably suffer from today.
You seem to assume that copyrights require paperwork such as registration. This is wrong, copyright is automatic. And it prevents the downloader from making the sort of change that you suggest. In fact, it prevents the downloader from using your template at all. The only reason the downloader can use that template is because you've granted him a specific license to ignore some copyright rules, but the default remains. And you did not grant the right to alter the template to free users.
Font shapes are not legally protected, whereas font names are. As such, one can make copies of fonts and give them new names. Helvetica is one of the 'base' fonts included in PostScript printers. This made having a 'desktop' version very desirable. Some years ago, the font foundry URW made their Helvetic clone (Nimbus Sans) available under an open license. This allowed the font files to be included in open source software distributions, including LaTeX set ups, with no fee or legal restrictions. Subsequently, these font files have been used as the basis for the 'TeX Gyre' fonts: see http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/e-foundry/tex-gyre for the fonts and https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb27-2/tb87hagen-gyre.pdf for background. The TeX Gyre fonts are available in OpenType format, and so can be used with (for example) OpenOffice (technically and legally). Note that these fonts are 'metric compatible' with the 'parents', i.e. they can be used directly as replacements for Helvetica, etc. with no change to the appearance of documents.
Strictly speaking, yes, Microsoft owns the copyright for all that stuff. But they grant users a license. So it's a matter of knowing what they let us do with it. I grabbed the EULA for Excel 2013. You'll want to check your version. My reading of this is that you can do the thing that you want to do. M. ADDITIONAL LICENSING REQUIREMENTS AND/OR USE RIGHTS ... Media Elements. Microsoft grants you a license to copy, distribute, perform and display media elements (images, clip art, animations, sounds, music, video clips, templates and other forms of content) included with the software in projects and documents, except that you may not: (i) sell, license or distribute copies of any media elements by themselves or as a product if the primary value of the product is the media elements; (ii) grant your customers rights to further license or distribute the media elements; (iii) license or distribute for commercial purposes media elements that include the representation of identifiable individuals, governments, logos, trademarks, or emblems or use these types of images in ways that could imply an endorsement or association with your product, entity or activity; or (iv) create obscene or scandalous works using the media elements. Other media elements, which are accessible on Office.com or on other websites through features of the software, are governed by the terms on those websites.