Wasn't sure where to place this exactly.

We have a service which will generate product labels for our partners, which will then be sent to the bottling, canning and packaging factories, where the products for supermarkets are packaged and labelled.

The labels are in EPS format and contain the graphic the supermarket provides + a 3D barcode (QR code) and a URL. The URL is, at the request of the partner network in Arial.

The question is, because we cannot guarantee that Arial is available on all printers, we have to embed the Arial font in the EPS. Do we need a licence to do this? There seem to be mixed reports on what you can embed a font for and how.

The points of view lay between "if the recipient can only use the embeded font to view / print, no licence is needed, if they can edit the font, we need a licence" to "if we are embedding, we need a licence."

Does anybody have any experience with this sort of thing? I know we have a few people who work / worked in the publishing industry, so I'm hopeful I can get an answer.

The easiest way, assuming that URL doesn't need to be edited by anyone else, is to convert the font to outlines in the EPS file? Then you don't need to embed the actual font, it's a vector shape. What software are you using to create the EPS - if Adobe Illustrator, there's a "Convert type to outlines" option under the font menu.

Or do they need to edit the URL in Arial? If so, try doing it as a PDF with the font embedded - I believe that allows you to get round the licensing issue because you're not actually giving them a separate font file - you're only allowing them to edit the characters within the PDF environment, so you can't then extract that font and use it elsewhere. They'd need the full Acrobat Professional I think if they want to save the end result once they've edited it.

We are using a server side application to automatically generate the URLs and add them to the quality seals provided by the customer and generate an .eps file which can be sent to their labelling plant.

We need to continually generate the labels for different products. They will probably be generating hundreds or thousands of different labels each month.

Ah right, no experience of using server side applications myself, so can't really advise on that. But, I suppose my point is still valid, if the URL doesn't need to be edited in any way afterwards, can it not just be converted to a rasterised graphic and inserted in the same way as the graphic the supermarket is providing you with? Like I say, I don't know if this is possible to make the server side app rasterise that URL into a graphic?

I believe font licensing is only relevant if you're actually supplying them with font file to install on their system - which you're not, you're embedding a font for the purposes of printing it. I don't think they can extract that font from the EPS and install it on their system or distribute it afterwards, so you're OK from a legal standpoint.

I've just spoken to the devs. They are generating the code directly in Java, they don't use any libraries, so converting the text to vector outlines would involve writing a lot of new code! Which would probably mean, if the font has to be licenced for embedding, that that would probably be cheaper.

Microsoft Font Redistribution FAQ
TBH I suspect the real answer is 'Nobody knows'.

Would using a metrically equivalent free font, such as Liberation Sans, be impossible? Most non-font-snobs would never know the difference tbh.

Yeah, I found the FAQ yesterday.

My interpretation was that if the fonts are supplied with the system (Windows, Office etc.), then you can embed them in documents and allow the recipient to edit them.

If you move the document onto a separate system, which doesn't have Windows and modify it, you cannot pass the embedded font on again.

I need to check the Microsoft Font Pack for Linux and see what restrictions they put on those fonts.