Font changed hands - I have an old license - can I still use this font? [closed]

Question

I wanted to use the MUSEO Slab font on my website. In the past one weight used to be available from google web fonts, but this has now disappeared... Instead google provides a link to fonts.com, where it's now part of their web fonts. But it's not even included in their freely available fonts anymore.

Now my problem: I have this font on my hard disk, in 3 different weights (300,500,700) and all in regular plus italic, legally downloaded from myfonts.com when the font was first realeased (around 2009). Each zip file contains a license text, which states among other things

“Allowed uses: You may use the licensed fonts to create images on any surface such as computer screens, paper, web pages, photographs, movie credits, printed material, T-shirts, and other surfaces where the image is a fixed size. You may use the licensed fonts to create EPS files or other scalable drawings. You may import characters from the font as graphical objects into a drawing program and modify such graphical objects.”

Hence my question: may I still use this font for designs I create for clients?

This would be a commercial use as far as I understand. Even though it looks like the font has changed hands (and conditions) as far as the distribution is concerned. Does a previously granted license expire in such circumstances?

ps: for my web site I won't use it anymore, since I cannot get it as a free web font, so I replaced it with Arvo (also in related graphics)...

Answer 1

This isn't a software engineering question, this is a matter of legal interpretation of a license agreement. I am not a lawyer, but I will give you my non-expert comments on your question.

You don't include the complete license agreement. Parts of the agreement you don't include might have a bearing on your situation.

• Does any portion of the license talk about whether commercial use is permitted?
• Does any portion of the license talk about the term of the license, especially whether the license is perpetual?

You say you "use the ...font on [your] website". You don't say exactly what use you have in mind. But if you intend to use HTML and CSS to call for browsers to format your site's pages with the font, and if you intend to install the font on your web site so that you serve it to web clients, then that sounds to me like a different use than any of the "allowed uses" you mention. I don't see anything in the text you show which says you are permitted to serve it to web clients.

Another Stack Overflow question, How to use web-fonts legally?, may be informative.

See also Adobe's blog post on Understanding Web Font Licensing, and Jarel Remick's ThemeForest blog post Everything you Need to Know About Font Licensing for the Web, and other search results from "web site font licensing".