diff --git a/COPYING b/COPYING
index f6748da05..9d1056f40 100644
--- a/COPYING
+++ b/COPYING
@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
 HarfBuzz is licensed under the so-called "Old MIT" license.  Details follow.
+For parts of HarfBuzz that are licensed under different licenses see individual
+files names COPYING in subdirectories where applicable.
 
 Copyright © 2010,2011,2012  Google, Inc.
 Copyright © 2012  Mozilla Foundation
diff --git a/src/hb-icu-le/COPYING b/src/hb-icu-le/COPYING
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..808096833
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/hb-icu-le/COPYING
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+The contents of this directory are licensed under the ICU license.
+See file license.html.
diff --git a/src/hb-icu-le/Makefile.am b/src/hb-icu-le/Makefile.am
index dd99dc178..e3b103cd6 100644
--- a/src/hb-icu-le/Makefile.am
+++ b/src/hb-icu-le/Makefile.am
@@ -20,6 +20,6 @@ libhb_icu_le_la_CPPFLAGS = \
 libhb_icu_le_la_LIBADD = \
 	$(ICU_LE_LIBS)
 
-EXTRA_DIST = README license.html
+EXTRA_DIST = README license.html COPYING
 
 -include $(top_srcdir)/git.mk
diff --git a/src/hb-ucdn/Makefile.am b/src/hb-ucdn/Makefile.am
index fad4e2ebe..40d6055c1 100644
--- a/src/hb-ucdn/Makefile.am
+++ b/src/hb-ucdn/Makefile.am
@@ -13,6 +13,6 @@ libhb_ucdn_CPPFLAGS = \
 	-I$(top_builddir)/src
 libhb_ucdn_la_LIBADD =
 
-EXTRA_DIST = README
+EXTRA_DIST = README COPYING
 
 -include $(top_srcdir)/git.mk
diff --git a/src/hb-ucdn/README b/src/hb-ucdn/README
index 67469bdf1..fcb97b9aa 100644
--- a/src/hb-ucdn/README
+++ b/src/hb-ucdn/README
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+Contents of this directory are derived from UCDN:
+
+  https://github.com/grigorig/ucdn
+
+The original README follows:
+
+
 UCDN - Unicode Database and Normalization
 
 UCDN is a Unicode support library. Currently, it provides access