Avoiding Commercial Font Copyright Violation

[BenLegalGrafix]

BLG Here..Okay I had an notification from author of a particular font. Im determining which fonts are completely royalty free and/or reasonable priced. My problem is This author said I used his font commercially, in which someone bought this font and illegally re-up'd it and I (without researching) downloaded it and used it thinking it was free for commercial. The one who uploaded it I presumed was the original author and even said so. The Readme just said date made. So I was notified by the REAL author who CREATED the font when he saw my artwork displayed and emailed me saying that I violated copyright. I emailed him back what I've done and who I got it from. He said that I got it from an third-party illegally. He let me off the hook by saying I have to agree to never display the artwork unless I actually buy a licence to the font. I was lucky.

So my problem is....How do I make sure I'm getting fonts from reliable sources?
because I will get sued next time with my luck.

Im not releasing the font name or author but it was illegally up'd on dafont.com. The licence to use it is like $65! do ya research.

[225designs]

i dont really put my name on most things

[Livia329]

How did he know you didn't pay for it?

Only way really is double checking the licenses, like dafont has commercial or for personal use only etc in the right corner. But of course, some people who re-up illegally will not bother with those. You could always search the font on google and if it's a paid font it'll come up on myfonts or similar with a price.

Of course, that's a bit annoying when you're just wanting to download a few fonts. Things are messed up with fonts because of people re-upping, making it hard for downloaders to know what they're getting.