Fonts... What is considered to be a "modification"?

[follicle]

Greetings!

I've been purchasing a few fonts lately for my future use. I'd like to get a pretty decent collection running so that I can use them for any appropriate projects that come along. The other night, I was working on an identity, and I suddenly got myself into a confusing predicament.

We have all seen logos or logotypes that have modified type characters to further improve the communication. For example, a logotype for a floral shop might have leaves or flowers growing off of one of the letters. As another example, let's say that there's a casino named "Yes!", and they modify the "Y" to look like a person spreading their arms shouting "Yes!".

Generally, when you look through the licensing information, it includes a sentence that reads like so:

"Do not modify or alter this font software."

But that is all the detail they go into. What does this mean? Does that mean that it cannot be modified what-so-ever? Does that mean that the font can't be modified and then re-saved? Or worse yet, re-sold?

With a lot of the logotypes that I see floating around like those mentioned above, I'm wondering if this would violate the copyright laws of those fonts, if those fonts' license stats that the characters cannot be modified or altered. Maybe these kind of logotypes are actually drawn by the designer instead of modifying an existing font.

I have a lot of great ideas, but I don't want to break any copy write laws! Does anyone have any information in this subject?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[budafist]

I think it means that the font files themselves cant be modified, but when you use the font in a design, that's not modifying the font file, it's modifying the design.

Example, you don't open up Helvetica in fontographer, move some counters around, make a descender longer etc and then save over this with the same file name.

If you read "do not modify font" as "do not modify font when used in a design" you could never colour text or scale it or anything!

[urstwile]

My instinct is along with Buda's.

I think that if you develop a logotype, and in doing so, you modify certain characters in the font to suit the brand, then you're probably okay.

What you probably don't want to do is develop, say, a text font that contains those modifications, although many corporate entities do just that, but I suspect they make sure as hell they're getting the license to do that and call it their own. For example, Apple has its own Garamond, so, back in the day, did AT&T. IBM had (has?) Bodoni, etc.

I think you're fine as long as a) you legitimately own the font and b) you don't try to recreate the font and resell it as something else.

[hewligan]

Well, US copyright law in relation to fonts is a bit weird (http://desktoppub.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=desktoppub&cdn=compute&tm=9&f=10&su=p284.8.150.ip_&tt=14&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.typeright.org/feature4.html) - which is how Apple got to have their own version of Garamond and so on.

But remember, while the US does not let you copyright a typeface, the actual font file is a piece of software, and as such does enjoy copyright protection. Plus, that's just the US, and different rules apply everywhere else in the world.

In practice, you're quite safe taking a font, and making modifications to it as part of a logo - but you could not give the actual font itself to anyone who did not have an appropriate license. But, an outlined or rasterised version of that logo is just fine.