Helvetica Neue Light with @font-face .. legal? [closed]

Answer 1

If you are just referencing the users system fonts then the licensing requirement is on the User.

If you are providing the font then you (or your client) will need to licence the Font -- even if it's a free font there will likely be some form of licence.

@font-face uses two forms of reference: LOCAL which references the user's system font and URL which effectively uses a copy of a font which you provide and as there is very little point in using the @fontface rule if you aren't going to provide the font then it's almost certain that you'll need to actively obtain a licence.

for example:

@font-face {
  font-family: myHelveticaLight;
  src: local("Helvetica Neue Light"),
       local("HelveticaNeue-Light");
}

Here you are only referencing a user's installed system font and therefore have no have responsibility for obtaining the licence.

In the following example you are also providing a fallback copy of the font so you must have actively obtained a web licence for that font (or rather your client or the website owner will need to)

@font-face {
  font-family: myHelveticaLight;
  src: local("Helvetica Neue Light"),
       local("HelveticaNeue-Light"),
       url(HelveticaNeueLight.ttf);
}

Answer 2

No.

You may install one copy of the Software on one Computer file server within your Internal Network for the purpose of downloading and installing the Software on up to the Permitted Number of other Computers within the same Internal Network,

Which is 5 for this specific license.

Answer 3

Just took a look, and its actually Adobe who owns it, and they sell it for money. So, my best guess is no, you couldn't legally use it for free. I have no idea if Adobe licenses it, though. Maybe you could try and find one that's licensed for web use, and is similar to Helvetica?

Answer 4

I believe there is only one official Helvetica Neue, and, as stated by Chuck, owned by linotype. So, you'll have to ask them. (Last I checked, they don't allow it, but I've since heard they've started opening up some of their font licenses for @font-face use...)

But, in general, you need to read the license of the individual font. That's the only way to know. Even then, licenses can be rather vague, so you usually want to go back to the foundry and ask them directly.

Answer 5

Embedding it using @font-face would probably be illegal (unless the foundry that owns it has extended their EULAs). Helvetica is pretty widespread as it comes standard with mac and Arial (almost identical) is standard on PCs. If you aren't using any of the more fancy weights that come with Helvetica Neue, I'm sure you could just specify Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif and it would show up fine on most machines.

You could try searching Font Squirrel for a substitute, or use images if the font's EULA is restricted. TypeKit also offers many classic fonts for web-embedding for a fee. Helvetica is not one of them, but you might request them to add it.

Answer 6

Apple pays for its system fonts, so the inclusion of a font in Apple's operating systems doesn't tell you much. That particular font is owned by Linotype and sold for profit. A quick Google tells me fonts.com offers Neue Helvetica Light as a Web font, so you might take a look there.