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License

End User License Agreement

This agreement governs the license under which the Calamus software is supplied to you. Read it in full. It states what you may and may not do with the software, who owns what, the basis on which fonts are embedded in the files you export, and the circumstances in which the license terminates.

Last updated 9 September 2026. This End User License Agreement (this “Agreement”) is entered into between Calamus LLC, an Arizona limited liability company (“Calamus”, “we” or “us”), and the person installing or using the software (“you”). It applies to the Calamus web application at write.calamusapp.com, the macOS desktop application, the iPadOS application, and Calamus Ideas for iOS (together, the “Software”). Installing or using any part of the Software constitutes acceptance of this Agreement. This Agreement governs the Software; the Terms of Service govern the account and the transaction.

1. Grant of license

1.1. Subject to your compliance with this Agreement, Calamus grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to install and use the Software for your own writing on the devices you use. You acquire a license to use the Software; you do not acquire title to the Software itself.

1.2. You may not assign or otherwise transfer this license. Calamus may assign this Agreement to a successor on the terms stated in clause 15 of the Terms of Service.

1.3. The license permits you to:

  • use the web application, the macOS and iPadOS applications, and Calamus Ideas for iOS, under a single account;
  • use the Software for commercial purposes, including works you write and sell; and
  • continue to use the version licensed to you together with all updates to the modules your purchase covers.

1.4. The license attaches to an account, and an account may be held only by a person 13 years of age or older. If you are under 18, a parent or legal guardian must review and accept this Agreement and the Terms of Service together with you. If you are under 16 and resident in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, acceptance must be given by your parent or legal guardian.

2. Restrictions

You shall not:

  • share, resell, sublicense, rent, lease, lend or otherwise transfer the license, the Software, or your account credentials;
  • copy, modify, decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer or otherwise attempt to derive the source code of the Software, except to the extent such restriction is expressly prohibited by applicable law;
  • remove, obscure or alter any proprietary notice contained in the Software;
  • import into the Software any published work or other content in which the rights belong to a third party. Importing your own work is a permitted and intended use, whether or not it has been published;
  • use the Software in violation of applicable law, or to store or distribute material you do not have the right to store or distribute; or
  • circumvent any technical limitation applied to the account, the trial, or paid functionality.

3. Your content

3.1. You retain all right, title and interest in the manuscripts, notes, Codex entries, outlines, uploaded images and compiled files you create through the Software. This Agreement confers on Calamus no ownership of that content and no right to publish, sell, or use it to train any model.

3.2. You grant Calamus only the limited technical permission necessary to operate the Software: to store your content, to transmit it between your devices, and to render and export it at your direction. No further permission is granted or implied.

4. Intellectual property

The Software, including its object and source code, user interface, name and logo, is the property of Calamus LLC and is protected by copyright, trademark and other intellectual property law. Fonts and software libraries distributed with the Software remain the property of their respective owners and are licensed under their own terms.

5. Fonts embedded in exported files

5.1. The Compile function embeds font files into the EPUB and PDF files it generates, and those font files are distributed with your work. Every typeface supplied with the Software is drawn from the Google Fonts library and is licensed on terms permitting that distribution. No further payment is owed to Calamus or to any font designer by reason of your work being sold, and no separate font license is required in order to sell a work compiled by the Software.

5.2. Of the 1,942 families supplied, 1,902 are licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, which expressly permits a font to be embedded in a document and that document to be sold, with no notice required in the document itself.

5.3. Five families are licensed under the Ubuntu Font License: Ubuntu, Ubuntu Condensed, Ubuntu Mono, Ubuntu Sans and Ubuntu Sans Mono.

5.4. Thirty-five families are licensed under the Apache License 2.0: Aclonica, Calligraffitti, Cherry Cream Soda, Chewy, Coming Soon, Crafty Girls, Crushed, Fontdiner Swanky, Homemade Apple, Irish Grover, Just Another Hand, Kosugi, Kosugi Maru, Kranky, Luckiest Guy, Maiden Orange, Montez, Mountains of Christmas, Permanent Marker, Rancho, Redressed, Roboto Slab, Rochester, Rock Salt, Satisfy, Schoolbell, Slackey, Smokum, Special Elite, Sunshiney, Syncopate, Ultra, Unkempt, Walter Turncoat and Yellowtail.

5.5. The Ubuntu Font License and the Apache License 2.0 each permit commercial use and embedding, and each require the license notice to accompany the font wherever the font is redistributed, including in a work sold with the font embedded. The Compile function satisfies that requirement: an EPUB embedding one of those 40 families carries the full license text within the file, and a PDF carries the notice in its document metadata, referencing the published license. A work set entirely in the other 1,902 families carries neither, none being required.

5.6. Under each of the three licenses, you may not extract a font from an exported file and sell or otherwise redistribute that font on its own. Embedding a font within your work is the permitted use. A font you install or import yourself is governed by its own license and not by this Agreement.

6. Updates

Updates to the modules your purchase covers are supplied at no additional charge and are governed by this Agreement. An update may change, add or remove functionality. A module first made available after your purchase may be licensed separately.

7. Backups

The Software provides export and backup functions. You are responsible for retaining your own copies of any content you cannot afford to lose, and should use those functions at regular intervals.

8. Disclaimer of warranties

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Software is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Software will be free from defects or available without interruption.

9. Limitation of liability

9.1. To the fullest extent permitted by law, our aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the Software shall not exceed the amount paid by you for the license.

9.2. Nothing in this Agreement excludes or limits liability that may not lawfully be excluded or limited, and nothing in this Agreement excludes or limits a right conferred on you by the consumer law of your place of residence.

10. Term and termination

10.1. This license terminates on your breach of this Agreement, on the refund of your purchase, or on a chargeback being raised and upheld. The consequences of termination for that reason, including the seven-day period in which you may export your content, are stated in clause 7 of the Terms of Service.

10.2. You may terminate this license at any time by deleting your account. The procedure is set out in the data deletion notice.

10.3. Clauses 3, 4, 5.6, 8, 9 and 11 survive termination of this Agreement.

11. Applications obtained through the App Store

This clause applies to the iPadOS application and to Calamus Ideas for iOS, and is required by Apple Inc. as a condition of distribution through the App Store. Apple Inc. and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of this clause and may enforce it against you.

  • Acknowledgment. This Agreement is concluded between you and Calamus LLC only, and not with Apple. Calamus, and not Apple, is solely responsible for the Software and its content.
  • Scope of license. The license granted to you for the iPadOS and iOS applications is limited to a non-transferable license to use those applications on any Apple-branded product that you own or control, as permitted by the Usage Rules set out in the App Store Terms of Service.
  • Maintenance and support. Calamus is solely responsible for providing maintenance and support for the Software. Apple has no obligation to furnish any maintenance or support services.
  • Warranty. In the event of any failure of the Software to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price, if any, paid for the application. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to the Software, and any other claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs or expenses attributable to a failure to conform to any warranty are the sole responsibility of Calamus.
  • Product claims. Calamus, and not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party relating to the Software or your possession or use of it, including product liability claims, any claim that the Software fails to conform to an applicable legal or regulatory requirement, and any claim arising under consumer protection or similar legislation.
  • Intellectual property claims. Calamus, and not Apple, is responsible for the investigation, defense, settlement and discharge of any third-party claim that the Software or your possession or use of it infringes that third party’s intellectual property rights.
  • Legal compliance. You represent and warrant that you are not located in a country subject to a United States Government embargo or designated by the United States Government as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not listed on any United States Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
  • Third-party terms. You must comply with the terms of any third-party agreement applicable to your use of the Software. Connecting a third-party social account subjects you to the terms of that platform in addition to this Agreement, and that platform may restrict or suspend an account for reasons over which Calamus has no visibility or control.

12. Governing law

This Agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Arizona, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws provisions, and clause 18 of the Terms of Service applies to any dispute arising out of or relating to it.

13. Notices

Notices concerning this Agreement must be sent to support at calamusapp dot com, or to Calamus LLC at the postal address stated on the legal notices page.

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