I'm having a heck of a time getting a straight answer for this. Hope somebody here can help!
If I'm a small commercial company that's creating an Android application for a paid service, what sort of license do I need to buy to legally use Helvetica Neue (and a couple other variations of Helvetica)?
Where do I buy it?
Edit: I got the following response when inquiring about purchasing:
Thank you for the inquiry. We have a special license for mobile developers that enables them to distribute fonts in a title for two years of the title for a paid-up license fee. We can provide you with a license to distribute the Helvetica Neue regular, medium, light, bold and Italic fonts with unlimited units of a single application title only on the Android platform for $3,250. This is fee for two year distribution of the font in that title. There are no unit reporting requirements under this license. If you also want to include the iOS platform the license fee would be $3,750 instead of $3,250.
The license fees include warranty and indemnification from Monotype Imaging. Please let me know if you have any questions or if you would like to proceed with a license. We look forward to working with you.
Answer
The font itself (with its variants) can be bought from Linotype. Font licences change depending on the foundry, and also depending on use. You will for sure need to buy at least one license for commercial use. But as always with font licensing, it's best to ask the foundry directly, as each one is different.
From https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/102925/using-fonts-in-your-applications:
"If you bundle a font with your app, you have to take care to comply with any license terms under which that font is published. If you buy a font for personal use from Adobe, you are not license to redistribute it (...) You will only need to obtain patent licenses if you yourself provide the code that translates a font's data file into a screen glyph. If you are using the type rendering engine that is built into your mobile device's operating system then you don't need to worry about the patents."
That being said, if you need a free font, an excellent alternative is Liberation Sans.
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