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disney used my font
Quote disney used my font for a frozen shirt at target for 14.99 without my consent .how do I go about this...is it my loss?? the font isnt free for commercial use.
Wich font? picture of the tshirt?
des805 said 
... a frozen shirt at target for 14.99 ...
Just a few questions
1 how sure are you that it is yours? (There are a whole slew of Frozen look-a-likes that were made after the Disney movie)
2. Does the t-shirt say Disney made it? Could it have been manufactured by someone else to make a quick buck?
3 did your font come before or after the movie title was made?
Edited 2 times. Last edit on Dec 01, 2014 at 14:54 by Heron2001
1 how sure are you that it is yours? (There are a whole slew of Frozen look-a-likes that were made after the Disney movie)
2. Does the t-shirt say Disney made it? Could it have been manufactured by someone else to make a quick buck?
3 did your font come before or after the movie title was made?
Edited 2 times. Last edit on Dec 01, 2014 at 14:54 by Heron2001
http://www.target.com/p/disney-frozen-girls-sing-along-graphic-tee/-/A-16512649#prodSlot=medium_1_7&term=girls+frozen+shirt
that's the shirt and im sure this is my font "cookie chips"
Edited on Dec 04, 2014 at 15:33 by koeiekat
that's the shirt and im sure this is my font "cookie chips"
Edited on Dec 04, 2014 at 15:33 by koeiekat
I doubt if those are Disney products. Someone might have just gotten a right to use Frozen from Disney.
As for your font, how sure are you that the manufacturer of the shirt has not made a donation? I downloaded your font just now and did not see anything there aside from the font. They might have sent you a $1 dollar or a $1,000 donation, and that clears them of any liability. Target did not disclose the manufacturer so you do not have an idea who to look for among those who made a donation to you. If you think you were aggrieved by this and you are thinking of taking legal action, sue Target. On my part, I always ask who the end user is since it is most often that the agency is the one who contacts you and makes the donation on behalf of the end user.
If your intent is to make extra cash, I suggest you change Donationware to Free for personal use. To give you an idea of how much to ask, look at the end of this blog post
http://blog.daltonmaag.com/its-never-been-easier-to-use-our-fonts/
Although you can't ask as much as that for your fonts, you will have a very good idea on how much to ask for the commercial use of your fonts.
As for your font, how sure are you that the manufacturer of the shirt has not made a donation? I downloaded your font just now and did not see anything there aside from the font. They might have sent you a $1 dollar or a $1,000 donation, and that clears them of any liability. Target did not disclose the manufacturer so you do not have an idea who to look for among those who made a donation to you. If you think you were aggrieved by this and you are thinking of taking legal action, sue Target. On my part, I always ask who the end user is since it is most often that the agency is the one who contacts you and makes the donation on behalf of the end user.
If your intent is to make extra cash, I suggest you change Donationware to Free for personal use. To give you an idea of how much to ask, look at the end of this blog post
http://blog.daltonmaag.com/its-never-been-easier-to-use-our-fonts/
Although you can't ask as much as that for your fonts, you will have a very good idea on how much to ask for the commercial use of your fonts.
des805, I looked at the "Sisters Forever" shirt from your link in post #5, as well as the character map on DaFont for your Cookie Chips font. I had hoped to amend your post #5 to include the image, but the interactive nature of the T-Shirt precluded inserting it with simple HTML image tags.
Add koeiekat: Done, the image location is http://scene7.targetimg1.com/is/image/Target/16512649?wid=410&hei=410 so that can be inserted with the img tag
In my opinion, the lettering on the T-Shirt appears to be using your Cookie Chips font. Keep in mind, however, that I'm probably tied for 4,095th place in font identifications, so I'm no expert.
I didn't download the font, as toto@k22 did, but he mentioned that there is no read me file enclosed in the DaFont download .zip. If the header, (ie: The text you add to the font file, with copyright/ license information), in the font itself makes no mention that there is a fee for commercial use, it's very possible that the manufacturer of the shirt may not have known that there was any such fee, and that would be entirely your own fault.
I don't know if you submit your fonts to other sites besides DaFont, but even if you don't, other font download sites can and will make your fonts available for download, often without including all of the files prepared by the author, as included in the DaFont download package. They might provide download links only for .ttf files, omitting files like read me documents, licenses, graphics and character guides, etc., in order to use less bandwidth for their site. What they're doing might not be against the law, because there is no law against it, in the country where the site originates. Certain sites located in the Indian subcontinent, including Pakistan and Sri Lanka, are notorious for unabashedly offering commercial fonts for free download, and when any of those sites is mentioned by name, or linked in the DaFont forums, the information is quickly removed.
Something like this may well have happened: A sweatshop in Bangladesh was looking for a font to use, free of charge, to make cheap quality T-shirts for international export. They found your font somewhere, and since there was no notice or documentation to the contrary, assumed that it was free to use, for all purposes. In good faith, Target purchased some of the shirts, assuming that the manufacturer had commercial rights to the content printed on the shirt.
An equivalent situation, in Law: You own an unique hand crafted ring, inherited from your grandmother. The ring is stolen in a burglary. The thief sells the ring to a pawn shop, for some money to by drugs. The pawnshop owner sells the ring to someone. You see that person wearing your ring, and call the police.
The police would not charge the person wearing your ring with theft, because they bought the ring in good faith from the pawnshop. The police would return the ring to you. The person who bought the ring would be entitled to a refund from the pawnshop. The police could charge the pawnshop owner with possession and sale of stolen merchandise, and they would threaten to do that, if the pawnshop owner did not give them the name of the junkie who sold them the ring.
The pawnshop owner gives the ring purchaser their money back, and gives the police the name of the junkie. They go catch him while he's high, and charge him with possession of the other things he's stolen, and hasn't sold yet.
In this example, the person who bought the ring in the pawnshop would be like Target, the T-shirt manufacturer would be like the pawnshop owner, and the thief would be the site that offered your font for free, but they can't be caught, because they're in a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with yours.
If you tried to sue Target for lost income, Target would tell you that your legal issue is with the factory in Bangladesh, and legally, they would be right. You might be eligible to receive financial damages in civil court, provided that misappropriation of donationware fonts is a crime in Bangladesh. If the decision was determined by a Judge, the most crucial evidence would be whether or not the header in the font made specific reference to a fee for commercial use, with contact information for licensing inquiries. If that information is present, the manufacturer could not claim to not know of such a fee; saying that they don't read English would not be sufficient.
If the terms of use are absent from the header, however, you could not prove malicious intent on the part of the manufacturer. They could possibly offer to give you a small out of court settlement, but you would lose if the case came to court, (assuming no terms of use are in the header), because it would be argued that you were negligent by not stating the terms of use, and the shirt manufacturer did not knowingly infringe on license-able copy-written intellectual property.
Had the manufacturer known of a commercial use fee, they may well have chosen to use a different font instead, one made by someone else, with no usage strings attached.
Rather than try to be compensated after the fact for an error that may have been your fault, I'd suggest you capitalize on the promotion of your font that the T-shirt creates. You can say "Cookie Chips", as seen on this cheap T-Shirt, sold at Target", and that might ultimately do you more good than trying to get some money out of them now. What are they going to do, sue you for copyright infringement of their copyright infringement of you? If they took that one to court, you would win. Turn your lemons into lemonade, and protect your work better in the future, even if you feel you need to make updated versions of all of your submitted fonts, to add read me documents and additional header information.
Here's a static image of the T-Shirt:
If you want to use it, download the image, save it, and upload it somewhere else, or just use my link:
http://s26.postimg.org/4yhgfm1ix/Sisters_Forever.png
I used WinSnap3.5.5, a screen capture program, to make the image from the display on your page link in post #5. I don't know where you can get it; it was graciously provided to me by a link in the moderator's forum, when I had need of such an app, and I have been using it all the time, ever since.
~bobistheowl
Edited 2 times. Last edit on Dec 04, 2014 at 15:49 by koeiekat
Add koeiekat: Done, the image location is http://scene7.targetimg1.com/is/image/Target/16512649?wid=410&hei=410 so that can be inserted with the img tag
In my opinion, the lettering on the T-Shirt appears to be using your Cookie Chips font. Keep in mind, however, that I'm probably tied for 4,095th place in font identifications, so I'm no expert.
I didn't download the font, as toto@k22 did, but he mentioned that there is no read me file enclosed in the DaFont download .zip. If the header, (ie: The text you add to the font file, with copyright/ license information), in the font itself makes no mention that there is a fee for commercial use, it's very possible that the manufacturer of the shirt may not have known that there was any such fee, and that would be entirely your own fault.
I don't know if you submit your fonts to other sites besides DaFont, but even if you don't, other font download sites can and will make your fonts available for download, often without including all of the files prepared by the author, as included in the DaFont download package. They might provide download links only for .ttf files, omitting files like read me documents, licenses, graphics and character guides, etc., in order to use less bandwidth for their site. What they're doing might not be against the law, because there is no law against it, in the country where the site originates. Certain sites located in the Indian subcontinent, including Pakistan and Sri Lanka, are notorious for unabashedly offering commercial fonts for free download, and when any of those sites is mentioned by name, or linked in the DaFont forums, the information is quickly removed.
Something like this may well have happened: A sweatshop in Bangladesh was looking for a font to use, free of charge, to make cheap quality T-shirts for international export. They found your font somewhere, and since there was no notice or documentation to the contrary, assumed that it was free to use, for all purposes. In good faith, Target purchased some of the shirts, assuming that the manufacturer had commercial rights to the content printed on the shirt.
An equivalent situation, in Law: You own an unique hand crafted ring, inherited from your grandmother. The ring is stolen in a burglary. The thief sells the ring to a pawn shop, for some money to by drugs. The pawnshop owner sells the ring to someone. You see that person wearing your ring, and call the police.
The police would not charge the person wearing your ring with theft, because they bought the ring in good faith from the pawnshop. The police would return the ring to you. The person who bought the ring would be entitled to a refund from the pawnshop. The police could charge the pawnshop owner with possession and sale of stolen merchandise, and they would threaten to do that, if the pawnshop owner did not give them the name of the junkie who sold them the ring.
The pawnshop owner gives the ring purchaser their money back, and gives the police the name of the junkie. They go catch him while he's high, and charge him with possession of the other things he's stolen, and hasn't sold yet.
In this example, the person who bought the ring in the pawnshop would be like Target, the T-shirt manufacturer would be like the pawnshop owner, and the thief would be the site that offered your font for free, but they can't be caught, because they're in a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with yours.
If you tried to sue Target for lost income, Target would tell you that your legal issue is with the factory in Bangladesh, and legally, they would be right. You might be eligible to receive financial damages in civil court, provided that misappropriation of donationware fonts is a crime in Bangladesh. If the decision was determined by a Judge, the most crucial evidence would be whether or not the header in the font made specific reference to a fee for commercial use, with contact information for licensing inquiries. If that information is present, the manufacturer could not claim to not know of such a fee; saying that they don't read English would not be sufficient.
If the terms of use are absent from the header, however, you could not prove malicious intent on the part of the manufacturer. They could possibly offer to give you a small out of court settlement, but you would lose if the case came to court, (assuming no terms of use are in the header), because it would be argued that you were negligent by not stating the terms of use, and the shirt manufacturer did not knowingly infringe on license-able copy-written intellectual property.
Had the manufacturer known of a commercial use fee, they may well have chosen to use a different font instead, one made by someone else, with no usage strings attached.
Rather than try to be compensated after the fact for an error that may have been your fault, I'd suggest you capitalize on the promotion of your font that the T-shirt creates. You can say "Cookie Chips", as seen on this cheap T-Shirt, sold at Target", and that might ultimately do you more good than trying to get some money out of them now. What are they going to do, sue you for copyright infringement of their copyright infringement of you? If they took that one to court, you would win. Turn your lemons into lemonade, and protect your work better in the future, even if you feel you need to make updated versions of all of your submitted fonts, to add read me documents and additional header information.
Here's a static image of the T-Shirt:
If you want to use it, download the image, save it, and upload it somewhere else, or just use my link:
http://s26.postimg.org/4yhgfm1ix/Sisters_Forever.png
I used WinSnap3.5.5, a screen capture program, to make the image from the display on your page link in post #5. I don't know where you can get it; it was graciously provided to me by a link in the moderator's forum, when I had need of such an app, and I have been using it all the time, ever since.
~bobistheowl
Edited 2 times. Last edit on Dec 04, 2014 at 15:49 by koeiekat
this is going to sell real dumb but I thought I had a read me file attached , how do I make a read me file??
des805 said
this is going to sell real dumb but I thought I had a read me file attached , how do I make a read me file??
I don't know if you do. I didn't download your fonts. toto@k22's reply in #6 suggested that there isn't one.
Open Notepad, Give the document a name, Type the read me document, save it, include it in the .zip file when you submit a font. For many designers, the same read me is included in each of their fonts. In other cases, each read me is different for each font.
If you intended to have the same read me in every one of your fonts, you might be able to submit one in a .zip file to DaFont, and ask the webmaster to include it in each of the font .zips to which it would apply - list them all, by name, alphabetically. Having a read me in the DaFont .zip will not prevent the T-shirt incident from reoccurring, because you have no guarantee that your font will be downloaded from a site that includes read me documents. If you have commercial use instructions in the header of the font, and a download site removes those instructions to make the font appear to be free for all use, that would be a crime pretty much everywhere, and likely they would do that to other designers' work, besides your own. That sort of action would be considered 'malicious intent', in law, rather than an 'oops'.
The webmaster would not modify your fonts to include additional header information. It would be up to you to do that. You should do that with all your future font submissions, an at your discretion for any that are already circulating.
There is only the ttf in the download zip. There is no information on the font download page. There is no information whatsoever in the font's header, no designer, no copyright, no license, no description, no link, nothing.
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