Font Shock: What Printers Need to Know About New Licensing Notices

By Pat McGrew
McGrewGroup, Inc.

June 23, 2025 – A growing number of commercial printers, in-plant shops, marketing agencies, and brand service providers have reached out with the same urgent concern: surprise notices from Monotype regarding font licensing. These are not your average reminders to renew a software subscription. These are enterprise license renewals that have skyrocketed in demand. One long-standing licensee was told that their new cost would be millions of dollars, 30 times what they had been paying. Others have received website audit reports—often unsolicited—identifying the use of Monotype fonts and attaching invoices as high as $25,000 and demands to license software managers.

To make matters even more complex, the language in Monotype’s new licensing agreements has changed and warrants careful reading by someone who understands fonts and your business. For businesses unfamiliar with the legal and technical nuances of font licensing, this is deeply confusing and understandably alarming.

If you’re a printer receiving these notices and wondering, What happened?—you’re not alone! For many, fonts are supplied or requested by customers or selected by designers. Most printers include terms in their contracts that put the burden of font licensing for work delivered for print or eDelivery on the client. They often take responsibility for fonts used in work developed on behalf of clients in-house and include their font licensing costs in their Cost of Goods Sold calculations. That has been the norm, but the rules seem to be changing.

To make it more confusing, many of the fonts in use across the industry today originated from a variety of foundries (Linotype, Bitstream, FontShop, URW, Hoefler & Co., and many others) that Monotype acquired over the last two decades. That means your design team might be using fonts under legacy licenses from companies that technically no longer exist. Now, the rights to those fonts have consolidated under a single powerful entity. They may be stored in font libraries on on-site servers or a cloud-based directory, regularly accessed by design teams without concern. And for those with enterprise licenses, who operated under the assumption that they could download any font, they may not have been able to maintain precise records of everything downloaded and whether it was used in a project.

So, what’s going on?

Monotype, now owned by private equity firm HGGC, appears to be leveraging its massive library and legacy agreements to restructure font licensing across the board, aligning it with its current business model. In doing so, they are not only auditing websites and digital properties for font usage but also scrutinizing long-term licenses for renegotiation or revocation.

This creates a minefield for printers who rely on font libraries for packaging, marketing collateral, labels, signage, books, and countless other printed applications. Fonts that were once bundled with software or purchased outright are now being reevaluated by Monotype as part of an annualized licensing strategy, with hefty price tags attached.

What can you do?

First, don’t panic. Second, don’t ignore the notices or invoices. (Some have told us they thought they were scams.) Third, recognize that navigating this situation requires expert insight. Fonts are intellectual property, and their usage rights are governed by license agreements that often differ between desktop, web, app, server, and distribution use. Identifying whether a font is licensed by Monotype can require detective work—especially since their portfolio includes typefaces from over a dozen legacy foundries.

That’s where McGrewGroup can help. We’ve worked with printers, publishers, and brand agencies worldwide to evaluate font use, negotiate with vendors, and develop sustainable, compliant font strategies. Whether you’re facing an unexpected invoice, a licensing renewal, or a request to sign a new agreement, we can guide you through your options.

Remember: fonts are more than design assets; they are licensed tools. Understanding how to manage them strategically is essential to keeping your costs predictable and your business out of legal trouble.

If you have received a font audit or a new license renewal that doesn’t make sense, reach out. You’re not the only one. And with the proper support, you don’t have to face it alone.

Contact McGrewGroup at pcm@mcgrewgroup.com.

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