Hi, and thank you for any help.
I am still really having a hard time grasping font/typeface law; if I format text digitally using a font, have it printed, and then trace the text onto signs for paid artwork, must I purchase a license to use the font/typeface?

Again, tracing printed fonts (using transfer paper) for hand-painted signs, a paying gig/event, but the signs will not be sold in any way, just used for an event.

Thank you for any clarification.

In this scenario, you would NOT need to purchase a license, provided that you used a font that was 100% Free, or Public Domain. Otherwise, you would need to abide by the commercial use terms.

For what you're suggesting, you could probably get away with it, particularly if you made errors in the manual tracing stage. You might spend some hours of manual labour to save yourself the cost of a license that's probably in the $20 range.

What you're saying, if I read you correctly, is that you will be paid to create the signs, but you're not selling the signs you've been paid to create, and you wonder if that's personal or commercial use. Someone who uses fonts to create wedding invitations does that, too. It's called graphic design.

No one can really stop you from doing what you suggest, but it isn't very cost effective, it will yield inferior results, and you'll have to live with the personal guilt of having ripped someone off. If you're OK with all that, knock yourself out, but no one here is going to 'give you their blessing' to do it, which is what you really wanted, in the first place.

Thanks Meta, I've had a hard time finding information about this online, and I do indeed want to make sure I'm not taking advantage of someone elses work. Please don't presume that "all I wanted in the first place" was to get the blessing of typographers to rip them off; I'm here asking questions about a topic that is by many accounts fairly widely misunderstood, to avoid exactly that.
Thanks again for the help!

The confusion, specially in the USA, is caused by that Americans consider a font a piece of software without taking the letterform, the actual shape of the letters, into account. So Americans think that if you redraw in whatever way an existing letterform you are OK. Whilst, at least in Western Europe the font software is considered only to be one of many ways to reproduce that letterform. By the mere fact that that lettershape exists the reproduction of that letterform is protected by the Convention of Berne which grants copyright protection for artistic works. And a letterform design is an artistic work.

So, whatever means you use to reproduce that letterform, you need the permission of the designer. When the designer has put it in the public domain or has made it free for private, commercial or whatever use then you already have that permission and you can go ahead. In all other cases you need the permission.

It is true, of course, that the chances that the designer will get to know your use of a letterform without the legally required permission is minimal or even far less than minimal. Yet, as Bobby pointed out, shame on you. And as you nicely said, you would not want that ...

If you download a stolen or "pirated" font and the owner discovers it, you may be guilty of copyright "infringement." If so, you may have to pay the owner money damages, and maybe even turnover any profits you made by using the fonts.

Claude, you are still thinking the American way whilst you are Canadian. Contrary to the USA (until some years ago) Canada did sign the Convention of Berne - being a British colony at the time. So copyright infringement goes a million miles further in Canada than there south of the Great Lakes where the protection of intellectual property doesn't mean shit.
As yesterdays USA elections results show, me, me, me, and shit for the rest. I will take whatever I want and others? Fuck'm.