is it legal to use fontsquirrel.com to create a @font-face kit for a font I have been given?

Question

fontsquirrel.com allows you to upload a font and create a @font-face kit which you can apply to your website and use to display fonts which will display cross-browser (even in IE6!).

But what I want to know is, is this legal? I've been supplied the font "Lubalin Graph Std" and told to use this for headers on the website I'm creating. I can upload the font file to fontsquirrel.com and use this to display headers in this font across the website - but I'm worried we'll get into trouble for doing this.

What should I do?

Answer 1

I've been supplied the font "Lubalin Graph Std"

That was probably an infringement of the font's licence already, unless the person who gave you it had a site licence and you're at the same location.

Traditional end-user licences do not permit redistribution for @font-face embedding on the web. Lubalin Graph appears to come from ITC, who say:

The basic ITC font software End User License Agreement (EULA) provides the ability to embed fonts into documents in a preview and print environment only.

Whilst the more forward-thinking foundries are promoting their fonts for web embedding use, ITC appear not to have this as a standard option and require you to contact them to negotiate an “Internet Font License”. Don't expect it to be cheap.

GIFs sound pleasant in comparison.