In order to compete for the audience's attention, designers often use "special fonts" on products such as trademarks, logos, and advertising. With the expansion of the rights protection movement of font companies such as Fangzheng and Hanyi, many companies have received compensation letters from font companies one after another.

Recently, a Taobao seller shared about their "font infringement" experience in the group: the seller claimed that their online store was informed of font infringement and sought help from nearby sellers.

From the conversation in the screenshot above, it can be seen that the seller's store may not only involve infringement of these three fonts, but also ask the seller how to solve it

After watching this scene, many people are confused, and some have not even heard of "font infringement".

In fact, lawsuits arising from "font infringement" are not uncommon.

Not long ago, Beijing Hanyi Keyin Information Technology Co., Ltd. also sued a Beijing science and technology company to the court for copyright infringement and Unfair competition disputes, requiring it to stop the infringement and claim 1.5 million yuan of economic losses.

When you search for "font infringement" in your browser, you will find that there are 4 related news articles in just one month.

Others showed that their use of "Microsoft YaHei" would also be informed of infringement

Isn't "Microsoft YaHei" included in the software?

In fact, "Microsoft YaHei" is a font work designed and developed by "Peking University Founder Electronics Co., Ltd.", which authorizes Microsoft to use it by agreement.

Not only "Microsoft YaHei", many software's own fonts must be authorized by the copyright owner.

Unauthorized use may result in infringement lawsuits from copyright holders

2007

Founder sued Blizzard Font for infringement and claimed 100 million yuan. In 2009, the claim amount was increased to 408 million yuan. In 2012, the Supreme People's Court ruled that Blizzard Company and others stopped the infringement and compensated Beijing University Founder Company for economic losses of 2 million yuan and reasonable litigation expenses of 50000 yuan.

2008

Fang Zheng sued Guangzhou Procter&Gamble for using Qianti characters on the packaging of its products such as Piaorou, and claimed 1.34 million yuan, but ultimately lost the lawsuit.

2012

The popular film '33 Days of Broken Love' ultimately compensated the copyright owner 20000 yuan due to the use of unauthorized fonts in the opening subtitles and SMS subtitles.

2016

The "Nine story Demon Tower" was claimed 510000 yuan for using 7 characters from unauthorized fonts.

At present, the court's judgment on such infringement is generally 3000 to 10000 yuan per word. If Type design plays a key role in product profitability, the amount of compensation will be more.

In addition to losing money, the promotional materials already issued need to be withdrawn, and responding to legal disputes also requires significant investment. Enterprises and brands also have to bear significant economic losses in this regard, as well as unfavorable situations in image promotion.

Why are commonly used fonts suspected of infringement?

On the internet, we see many questions like "What should I do if I receive a reminder letter from Founder?" Many people believe that Founder is like some companies selling pictures and fishing, thinking crazy about money.

In fact, the conflict between infringement and rights protection is not only about the conflict of interests, but also about the recognition of creative value.

For example, in the case of Fangzheng suing Blizzard Font for infringement in 2007, Fangzheng claimed 100 million yuan, and in 2009, the claim amount increased to 408 million yuan, sparking controversy from all walks of life. This case has been tumultuous for nearly five years, and a final judgment was made in May 2012, ruling that Blizzard and other defendants should compensate 2 million yuan.

However, there are still many problems behind Founder's victory. This is not only far from the amount of Founder's claim, but also a big difference compared with the more than 4 million yuan Court costs Founder paid for the first and second trials.

Liu Xiaokun, then Vice President of Founder, was deeply moved: When the infringing "World of Warcraft" was released in other countries, it was marked with the copyright owner in the font of other countries. Why is it not done in China?

According to the insiders, it is not easy to design a font simply. A font library needs 5000 or 6000 words for a small number, and 10000 or 20000 words for a large number. Each word needs to be carefully sketched and adjusted by the designer one stroke at a time. Usually, to design a style font library, it needs to design about 10000 characters+Punctuation. A team of several people can develop it for half a year or two or three years.

And the long development process and expensive development costs must rely on large-scale sales in the later stage, in order for a font to make money.

So, as font users, our rules are always correct. We can give due respect and understanding to copyright owners, and we can annoy or curse them, but in the end, we still have to do things according to the law.

Which fonts are free?

The Chinese fonts used in webpage design include free fonts such as Song typeface, Fangsong typeface, boldface, regular script, Lishu, and Youyuan. These fonts have been in use for a long time and the copyright cannot be traced. The pseudo free commercial Microsoft YaHei font is not an infringement when the browser shows that it is an IE browser, but you must be very careful when using the advertising design or the decoration design used by businesses.

Siyuan Font Series

The Siyuan series of fonts was developed by Google in collaboration with Adobe's online font library Typekityu, providing Google with 7 different sizes and thicknesses of bold fonts for its interface in China, Japan, and South Korea: ExtraLight, Light, Normal, Regular, Medium, Bold, and Heavy, perfectly covering the entire Chinese font system.

Source Han Sans is a sans serif font, which has excellent display effect on PC and wap interfaces. The regular and regular shape ensures that lazy designers will not infringe even without deformation treatment.

The Siyuan Song typeface belongs to a serif font, with Chinese character details at the beginning and end of the strokes, making it suitable for Chinese typesetting and internal page paragraphs. At present, Source Han Sans and Siyuan Song typeface series are available for free commercial use.

That's right, Founder still has a free series. As the most commonly used and largest supplier of fonts by designers, Founder's rich font styles, beautiful fonts, excellent quality, and wide applicability are all reasons why designers prefer it.

I really can't give up, just use the free commercial font series of Fangzheng Blackface, Fangzheng Shusong, Fangzheng Fangsong, and Fangzheng Kaiti.

The Wending font library is also commonly used by designers. Previously, many Wen Ding fonts were commercially available for free, but now there are only four remaining: Wen Ding PL Fine Shanghai Song, Wen Ding Zhong Kai Jian/Traditional, and Wen Ding Bao Song Jian.

文泉驿字体系列

The WenQuanYi Chinese character font project is completely open source and was founded by Fang Qian, a scholar in the United States, in October 2004. It is dedicated to solving the shortage of high-quality Chinese fonts in GNU/Linux.

At present, WenQuanYi has developed and released the first multi specification dot matrix Chinese character library that completely covers GB18030 Chinese characters (including more than 27000 Chinese characters), the first open source vector font that covers GBK character set (WenQuanYi is in black), and has provided most of the symbols related to Chinese, Japanese and Korean in the current open source font that contains the largest number of characters - GNU Unifont.

These font libraries have gradually become the preferred Chinese fonts for mainstream Linux/Unix distribution Chinese desktops.

At present, Ubuntu, Fedora, Slackware, Magic Linux and CDLinux use WenQuanYi as the default Chinese font. Debian, Gentoo, Mandriva, ArchLinux and Frugalware provide official source support, while FreeBSD provides it in its ports.

Wang Hanzong Free Font

Professor Wang Hanzong is a professor in the Department of Mathematics of Chung Yuan Christian University, who independently designed and developed the Tianchan font library. We donated ten sets of WCL series fonts and 32 sets of font libraries in 2000 and 2004, respectively. Released under the GNU GPL license. Although it is a rare feature that is permanently free across the entire network, the font type is very similar to that of the Wending font library. It is still important to pay attention when using it.

To avoid controversy, I would like to make a statement here: Wang Hanzong's imitation of Song, Wang Hanzong's imitation of Song simplified script, Wang Hanzong's official script, Wang Hanzong's Zhongming script, Wang Hanzong's coarse Ming script, Wang Hanzong's special Ming script, Wang Hanzong's thin circle, Wang Hanzong's special circle, Wang Hanzong's repeated circle, Wang Hanzong's Kanting flow, Wang Hanzong's variety show, Wang Hanzong's running script, Wang Hanzong's variety show double empty yin, and Wang Hanzong's coarse regular script simplified script. Please use the Wang Hanzong font for other parts that have not been mentioned with confidence.

Droid Sans Fallback

Despite the English title, this font library is a font designed by Google for the launch of Android devices and entrusted Taiwan Huakang Technology to design characters for Southeast Asian countries. The font effect is very similar to Microsoft YaHei, perfectly covering simplified/traditional Chinese, Korean and Japanese, and it is completely free of charge.

As one of the major domestic platforms where designers are active, Zhanku not only purchases their own copyright, but also spontaneously organizes outstanding designers on the platform to collectively create and design multiple free art fonts, and unconditionally and permanently commercializes them for free throughout the entire network.

The Zhanku font series includes the whole library of Chinese characters, numbers and English alphabet, basically covering all the use scenarios. Station Cool Black, Station Cool High end Black, Station Cool Happy Body, Station Cool Italic type (English) are all open for free use. The rough and casual font is also suitable for creative design and advertising images, although it is not exquisite enough, it is already sufficient.

Seto font

Seto font is a relatively niche font, with a name that sounds very stylish, but it is actually a Chinese font. The font style tends to be handwritten, suitable for use on posters and advertisements.

Xindi font

Xindi fonts are also free, regardless of personal or commercial use, but are prohibited in certain fields.

Free fonts: Xindi Wenzheng Mingti Free Edition, Xindi Xiaowanzi Elementary School Edition, Xindi Afternoon Tea Basic Edition, Xindi Zhao Mengfu Typeface.