The Unicode Consortium Font Submission Policy

From time to time, the Unicode Consortium requires fonts for use in the production and publication of Unicode standards, documentation, and other materials, and contributors may wish to license fonts to the Consortium for these purposes. In such cases, the Consortium requires a license from the font owner to ensure that it has the rights to make use of the fonts in accordance with its needs. The policies and guidelines set forth below govern the licensing of fonts to the Consortium.

As a preface, please note that granting a license to the Consortium does not mean you relinquish your own intellectual property rights; rather you are retaining your rights while granting permission to the Consortium to make certain uses of the materials licensed. For more information about the Consortium’s intellectual property policies, please see Intellectual Property, Licensing & Technical Contribution Policies.

• Acceptable Licenses for Fonts: The Consortium will generally accept fonts under the following licenses, and licensors are free to choose the license that best meets their needs.
• The SIL Open Font Licenses OFL 1.0 and OFL 1.1 (preferred), which are both free open source licenses designed especially for fonts.
• The MIT License, a broad highly permissive free open source license.
• The Apache 2.0 License, a broad highly permissive free open source license.
• The Unicode Font License, a very narrow restricted free license solely for licensing fonts to the Unicode Consortium for its publishing and operational needs.
• The Corporate or Individual Unicode Contributor License Agreement (CLA). If your contributions are already covered by an individual or corporate Unicode CLA, or if you wish to sign a Unicode CLA so that you may contribute more broadly to the Consortium’s projects, then you may rely on that Unicode CLA for purposes of licensing a font to the Consortium.


• Consortium Reservation of Rights: The Consortium reserves the right to reject any font or font license that does not meet its needs.


• Submission of Fonts without an enclosed License: In the event that the Consortium receives a font without the required license specified in the font file (as set forth in the Submission Instructions below), the font shall be deemed licensed for use by the Consortium under the terms of the Unicode Font License in perpetuity.


• Instructions for Font Submission & License Selection:


• License Selection Instructions: It is up to font owners/licensors to choose the license that best fits their needs with respect to the scope and terms of the license they are granting to the Consortium. The Consortium provides the above list of acceptable licenses only as a convenience to inform licensors of what licenses meet the Consortium’s needs. Font owners who propose to license a font to the Consortium should educate themselves on the specific terms and conditions of any license they propose to use, and should consult their own legal counsel regarding the terms and obligations imposed by any such license. The Consortium cannot advise on which licenses would meet the needs of licensors.


• Submission Instructions: Font licensors should send fonts to the Consortium as follows:
• Prepare a font file that includes (in addition to the font) the license for the font and ownership and copyright information, using OpenType name IDs. Specifically:
• Include all information regarding the ownership, provenance, and copyright for the font, including the names of the font manufacturer/vendor (name ID 8 “Manufacturer Name”), font designer (name ID 9 “Designer”), and Copyright Owner/Licensor of the font (name ID 0 “Copyright notice”).
• Identify the applicable font license with the name IDs 13 “License Description” (and 14 “License Info URL” if applicable) with one of the following methods:
• Reference the name and SPDX identifier (if available) for the license you wish to use.
• Cut and paste the entire license text into the font file (especially appropriate if the Unicode Font License is being used since it does not have an SPDX identifier).
• If you are submitting a font under an existing individual or corporate Unicode CLA, identify the CLA by the name of the contributor/licensor (whether corporate or individual) so that we may verify that the CLA is in place and current.


• Send the font file by email to fontsubmit@unicode.org. In the text of your email, please indicate (i) what Working Group (e.g., UTC Script Encoding Working Group, UTC Editorial Working Group, UTC Charts Working Group, etc.) the font should be forwarded to, and (ii) which Script(s) or Character(s) the font is for. If the font is an update to a prior font submission, please indicate that as well.


• Do not send more than one font per submission. If you are submitting multiple fonts, submit each separately following the above instructions.