In 2009 NBC was sued by Font Bureau alleging that the broadcaster did not secure sufficient rights for fonts used in several advertising campaigns for their shows. Font Bureau claims that in some instances NBC paid for one copy of the fonts then copied them to many computers, and in another case, the fonts were not licensed at all. Font Bureau asked for $2 million for the infraction.

This is only one example of what can happen when font license agreements are not closely monitored.

Understand Font License Terms Before You Purchase

Fonts are software and their use is subject to restrictions that are similar to software licenses. When you purchase a font, you do not own it; just as in a software application, you are allowed to use the font as long as your comply with the font vendors’ licensing terms.

First, you need to be aware of the terms of your licenses. Font vendors have different terms in their license agreement. For example, Adobe Systems allows for the subset embedding of fonts in pdf documents, but Emigre only permits this only if you purchase an extension to the original font license.

For this reason, before purchasing a font, you should always examine the terms its license and make sure you can comply with its restrictions in your workflow.

Many Free Fonts Have License Restrictions

Many sites on the Web offer so-called “free” fonts. If you examine their license terms closely, you’ll often find that many of these fonts are free for personal use, but require you to purchase a license if you use the fonts for commercial purposes.

For example, one small foundry requires commercial-use customers to send the foundry copies of documents in which the font is used, and then pay the foundry a fair-charge amount for the use. Very few commercial organizations could use such a font under such license terms; the legal fees required to review each use would dwarf the font license fees.

Make Sure Your Current Fonts Are in Compliance

Unless you have been carefully monitoring and enforcing font license compliance in your organization, chances are your font collection isn’t “yours.” It is likely be a mix of:

• Legally licensed fonts that could easily be installed on more devices than you have licensed
• Fonts introduced to your workflow by users who found and selected them for a design project
• Fonts legally purchased by single users, but that have spread across the organization
• Free fonts that people have downloaded off the Internet
• Fonts introduced and copied among machines because users thought they had the right to do so
. This commonly occurs when freelance designers assisting on projects bring their own font collection—which may or may not be properly licensed—into your organization to create their designs.

In short, your entire current font collection might need to be evaluated for license compliance.

Get Control of Your Financial and Legal Exposure

If you’re not tracking font usage in your organization, you could have significant financial and legal exposure. In a future posting, The Inside Scoop will show how you can use Insider products to get control of your fonts now.

For more information on how Insider can help you with enforcing license compliance and your 
other font management challenges, or for a free 30-day trial of Insider products, please visit
 www.insidersoftware.com or contact us.

Lots of New Features

FontAgent Pro TeamServer 5 includes:

• Even faster synchronization with networked client users
• Browser-based real-time reports that track font usage by machine or user
• WEBSIWYG, the browser-based online catalog that shows server-based fonts in their native typeface outlines
• An all-new industrial-strength, reliable, high-performance, Java-based architecture
• One-click installer for TeamServer and the J2EE environment

Comprehensive Font Management

Using the TeamServer and FontAgent Pro, you can control and manage fonts across your organization as you:

• Centralize and share fonts for consistency and control
• Install and remove fonts on user machines automatically
• Ensure font integrity and faithful rendering
• Enforce consistent font usage across all users and projects
• See stunning previews, slide shows and comparisons of your fonts
• Find fonts—locally and over the Internet—by properties or topic
• Print font books with full color control
• Administer the font server from any Mac or Windows connected client

Easy, Economical and Expandable

FontAgent Pro TeamServer is designed for everyone — no IT experience required! The five-user TeamServer is just $895 USD and the ten-user version is only $1295. It includes  FontAgent Pro client software for your users and you can add additional TeamServer users as you need them.

If you’d like to put TeamServer to work in your organization, let us know. We’re eager to work with you and your creative team.

Support for Windows 7 Fonts
FontAgent Pro 4.1 provides full support for Windows 7 system fonts. With a click, you can optimize your Fonts Control Panel, leaving system fonts in place while moving your other fonts into your FontAgent Pro font library where you can view, search and activate them as you wish.

New Auto-Activation Plug-Ins for Adobe Creative Suite 5
The new release includes auto-activation plug-ins for Adobe CS5 that find, match and activate fonts as you open InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop documents.  So now, FontAgent Pro for Windows includes auto-activation plug-ins for CS2, 3, 4 and 5.

Improved Keyword Search
The V4.1 release also expands its unique and extensive keyword search functionality, adding hundreds of new keywords and topics as well as support for fonts from the Ascender library of Monotype Imaging.

Connectivity to FontAgent Pro Server
The new FontAgent Pro 4.1 for Windows adds scheduled FAP Server synchronization to its existing manual sync functionality, making it even easier for organizations to standardize fonts across user desktops.

Free Upgrade for Existing FontAgent Pro 4 Licensees!
Do you already have a license for FontAgent Pro 4 for Windows? Have a license key beginning “FAW4″?  If so, you can upgrade to FAP 4.1 for free.

For More Information or a Free Trial
To learn more about this release, to download and update your software, or to get a free trial of FontAgent Pro 4.1 for Windows, click here.

Unique Technology that Ensures Correct Activation

Built on Insider’s unique FontSavant™ technology, the new release ensures that FontAgent Pro’s auto-activation manager always selects the right font in your documents—not just a close match or one that has the same name.

FontAgent Pro gives you full control over the font auto-activation process. It begins by detecting the most subtle differences among fonts to deliver the most accurate font activation possible. When no installed fonts match one required by a document, it provides a list of alternate fonts in your collection—with a relevancy ranking that shows how closely they match the font your document requested—so you can choose the best font. You can also activate a preferred font format (e.g., Type 1, OpenType, TrueType) automatically.

Availability and Pricing

Release 4.140 of FontAgent Pro is free to users who have already licensed FontAgent Pro 4. The product retails for $99.95 for new purchasers and is $49.95 for registered users of FontAgent Pro 3 and earlier. Cross-grades from qualifying competitive products are also available. Existing users and those wanting a 30-day trial version of FontAgent Pro can download the latest release from:

http://www.insidersoftware.com/downloads/FontAgentPro4.dmg

FontAgent Pro’s competitors claim their font managers are compatible with CS5, yet they also tell you that they have not released auto-activation support for it.  What’s that mean? At Insider we are providing you with the tools you need to stay productive today, not asking you to wait and see.

So, even this late in the game, FontAgent Pro is still the only game in town if you want full compatibility with Adobe Creative Suite 5. And from what we have been hearing, it could easily be that way for a while.

To download the FontAgent Pro CS5 auto-activation plug-ins click here.

To learn more about how Insider can help you streamline your creative process, including the industry-leading line of FontAgent Pro products, visit our site at www.insidersoftware.com.

Real-Time Font-Usage Manager
FontAgent Pro Server 4 now tracks font distribution and usage in real-time–an industry first. It shows which users have access to libraries and fonts, and when they activate and deactivate them. You can even use your favorite scripting language to export usage data into various file formats, and then use Excel, report scripts or asset managers to analyze and report on font usage and ensure compliance with font-license agreements–and be prepared for licensing audits at any time!

Live Font Server Backup
We’ve also added live backup services to FontAgent Pro Server 4. It backs up its fonts, users and groups without locking out users… something Extensis UTS doesn’t do. Better yet, you can restore a server to a previous state with just a few clicks. The backup manager lets you set the backup times, and you can also add font-server archiving into your existing backup scripts. Another important point: you can backup your font database to any networked drive–again unlike Extensis, which seems to force backup to only local drives, a practice which at best seems dangerous.

Failover Services Add to Lead in Multi-Server Environments
FontAgent Pro clients now include failover services that allow them to automatically connect to alternative servers when their primary font server is unavailable. Used in conjunction with FontAgent Pro’s server replication, these failover services make FontAgent Pro the clear choice in multi-server environments.

Enhanced Directory Services, Security and Permissions
We’ve also added faster Active Directory, Open Directory and LDAP synchronization to FontAgent Pro Server 4, along with improved support for nested groups, standalone users, keychain-based password protection and non-standard directory schemas. You can now identify group and font administrators who can upload fonts, create users and groups, edit licenses, upload and edit sets, upload and edit font libraries, assign fonts and users to groups and view font usage information–and allow IT administrators to maintain control of the font server itself.

Kerberos Single-Sign-on Support
Using Kerberos in your organization? FontAgent Pro clients now check if users have previously logged in via Kerberos. If so, they are automatically authenticated to FontAgent Pro Server. If not, FontAgent Pro asks them to enter their username and password. It’s that easy.

For More Information
We’re excited about FontAgent Pro Server 4, and we hope you are as well. If you have questions or would like more information, just let us know. We’ll get you the Inside Scoop.

And don’t forget that you can always access the Insider Knowledgebase from the Support section of the Insider website. It’s packed with technical tips and tricks that make using Insider products even easier.

Thanks for visiting us here at Insider. We hope to see you back here for The Inside Scoop on a regular basis. In the meanwhile, we’ll keep our eyes and ears open for inside information that you’ll find stimulating and helpful. See you soon.