You read the title - we've gathered six common licensing mistakes that you don't want to make.

You've found an image. You've selected a font. It might have even had the word 'free' next to it so there's nothing to worry about... right?

Unfortunately, there's a big difference between mostly free and all free. The difference could get you into legal trouble. Fonts and Images might appear to be free, but free for what exactly?

There are a few things 'free' could mean. 'Free' could mean the resource is free for personal use but not commercial use. 'Free' could mean no money is required but you must give attribution to the source (I'm looking at you, Apache License 2.0!).

Of course, 'free' could also mean one of these very generous license types, so keep an eye out for these phrases:

SIL Open Font License - Free for commercial use of any sort. Modifications are allowed. Font cannot be resold.
CC0 (aka Creative Commons Zero) - Completely free. You can even resell the font if you want!

In the image licensing world, things can be even more confusing. The best example of this is that the License type with word 'Free' in it is actually one of the LEAST permissive licenses. And yes, I'm talking about "Royalty-Free" images.

Royalty-Free just means that you don't have to pay every time you use the image (this puts Royalty-Free a step above Rights-Managed (RM) images which require you to pay per use, but you're still going to need to pay for a license to use a Royalty-free image!)

One other word of caution: the images you find in the 'Images' tab on your search results can be scraped from just about anywhere, meaning they are almost certainly not free to use. They could be from a website with legitimately free-to-use images, but they could just as easily be from an article with strict licensing standards or other copyrighted material.

Font licenses typically have a specific purpose in mind. For instance, you could purchase a desktop license that would enable you to install the font on your local machine and create designs for print, logos, etc. These licenses are typically restricted by number of users or computers the font is installed on, and they are also restricted to offline designs.

This means that if you want to put a font on your website, you'll need a web license. If you want to put a font in a mobile app, you'll need an app license. If you want to put a font in an e-book, you'll need an e-book license, etc.

Basically, knowing where exactly you want this font to end up will determine what kind of license(s) you'll need. And yes, you may need licenses plural. The easy trap to fall into is thinking that you already bought a license and therefore anything with that font is fair game. Make sure to read through your license (or if that's too boring you can try plugging it into an AI tool and have it summarize it for you) before putting your font in a spot that it wasn't previously.

Image licensing is a bit different - typically there's less focus on what context the picture is being used in. We already discussed that Royalty-Free means paying once to use an image as many times as you like (though there will almost certainly be restrictions on resale of the image itself.) Rights-Managed images typically require paying every time you use the image.

Creative Commons (CC) has multiple sub-categories. CC0 (equivalent of public domain) is the only creative commons license that doesn't require attribution. CC BY requires attribution, CC BY-NC (non-commercial) requires attribution AND is personal use only and CC BY-ND (No derivatives) requires attribution and requires no editing of the original image.

So, if you're looking for a truly "free" image (no attribution required and no license cost) you'll be looking for a CC0 or public domain image.

Fonts/images in templates may not be usable. Finding an image online is not generally safe - better to use a specific site.

This mistake is easy to make, especially with fonts. Your computer has fonts installed so why not use that font for the website you're launching later this quarter? Well, you'd unfortunately be violating either the Microsoft Office End User License Agreement, or the Apple Fonts License (depending on your platform of choice).

While these licenses do let you use the font for some commercial purposes (think slide presentations or official documents you've formatted with their software), you can't convert these fonts for use directly on your website.

If you like a font that's bundled with Windows or MacOS, you'll need to purchase a separate commercial license by looking up the foundry the font came from online. (Just search by the font name and add 'commercial license'.)

Using these fonts for a commercial logo is a bit of a gray area, especially if you use the built-in tools to create the logo and export it as a .png or .svg. However, it's generally recommended to avoid this and use fonts with an SIL Open Font License or CC0 license instead.

The same can also occur with fonts and images that came from an external template you may have found online or received from a coworker (which we'll discuss below.) Make sure to do your due dilligence and replace fonts and images in the template with ones you know you can legally use.

It's important to remember that a license allowing you to use a resource legally doesn't always allow your coworker or client to use that resource.

For instance, if you've purchased one desktop license for a font, you shouldn't email the font files to a coworker - you should purchase another desktop license or check if you can transfer the existing desktop license to them (many licenses do not allow this).

This also applies to client handoffs. You may have a license to use a particular font, but if your client does not, they will need to purchase their own license.

Images are often a bit more lenient in that if you have purchased rights to a particular image, most companies (such as Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, etc.) allow you to share the final product but will not allow the client to reuse the image in a different context.

Images and fonts alike also sometimes have particular usage limits such as the number of times a paper design can be printed, or a number of pageviews that a website gets, or a number of users who are permitted to access the resource.

AI Generated images often have surprisingly lenient licensing agreements. OpenAI (Dall-E), Adobe Firefly, Bing Image Creator, Microsoft Designer, and Stable Diffusion all allow you to use images created by prompting their engines for free in commercial settings without attribution. Midjourney, Canva, and Runway allow use commercially as long as you are paying for a subscription.

However, despite the relative leniency of these AI resources, it's worth noting that there have been lawsuits from individual artists against different AI companies regarding the companies using their art to train their models.

Given this information, if you do generate AI images for company use, avoid asking for images in the style of a particular artist - especially if the artist is still alive. (Realistically you probably won't get flagged for generating an image in the style of Michaelangelo!) Also avoid asking for images that involve copyrighted material such as company logos or well-known characters.

A final pitfall to avoid is forgetting to document the license that you have for an image or font that you're using. Over time, it's difficult to remember where exactly a resource came from, and if you are ever questioned about its validity, it's much easier to consult your license (or consult a copy of the open source license) if it's saved along with the resource.

Sometimes the license is site-wide and you can find it in the menu navigation or at the bottom of a website in the footer. Other times, especially when you've purchased the rights to an individual font or image, you may be given a license when you download the resource.

Either way, keeping the license in your files and even uploading them to your website if you're using them there is beneficial so you can always produce proof that you are legally using the resource.

Now that we've discussed all the ways that licensing can go wrong... let's discuss how it can go right!

Encourage your team members to draw from sources that are free for commercial use without attribution. This is one of the easiest ways to streamline your licensing experience since you won't need to purchase and read through long licenses.

For fonts, great sites include Google Fonts, Font Squirrel, The League of Moveable Type, and Collletttivo.

For images, sites include Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, Kaboompics, and StockSnap.

If you're looking for free illustrations, check out Manypixels, UnDraw, and SVGRepo

Or, if you're hoping for profile images, check out Humaaans and Open Peeps.

As we've discussed already, the most important way to protect yourself legally is to read through any licenses you're planning to use (or verify that it is indeed a Public Domain license of some variety). After that, whether the license was purchased for your use or whether you found it for free, download and document the license so that you always have access to it.

It'll be fastest to document the resource while it's fresh in your mind, so make sure to implement saving documentation as part of your routine.

If you've done everything you can to try and locate a resource's license and can't and you aren't sure what to do... just find a different picture that you are sure about. It almost certainly won't be as hard as you think to find a suitable alternative, and the peace of mind that your project won't be derailed by copyright or licensing issues is priceless.

Happy resource hunting!