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googlefonts__font_copyright

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Simon Cozens edited this page May 8, 2025 · 1 revision

Copyright notices match canonical pattern in fonts

googlefonts/font_copyright

  • Applies to: TTF
  • Fontspector can hotfix?: no
  • Fontspector can fix sources?: no

Rationale

This check aims at ensuring a uniform and legally accurate copyright statement on the name table entries and METADATA.pb files of font files across the Google Fonts library.

We also check that the copyright field in METADATA.pb matches the contents of the name table nameID 0 (Copyright), and that the copyright notice within the METADATA.pb file is not too long; if it is more than 500 characters, this may be an indication that either a full license or the font's description has been included in this field by mistake.

The expected pattern for the copyright string adheres to the following rules:

  • It must say "Copyright" followed by a 4 digit year (optionally followed by a hyphen and another 4 digit year)

  • Additional years or year ranges are also valid.

  • An optional comma can be placed here.

  • Then it must say "The Project Authors" and, within parentheses, a URL for a git repository must be provided. But we have an exception for the fonts from the Noto project, that simply have "google llc. all rights reserved" here.

  • The check is case insensitive and does not validate whether the familyname is correct, even though we'd obviously expect it to be.

Here is an example of a valid copyright string:

"Copyright 2017 The Archivo Black Project Authors (https://github.com/Omnibus-Type/ArchivoBlack)"

Proposals

Profiles

  • googlefonts (in section 'Licensing Checks')
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