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EU Throws out Microsoft's Vista Font Trademark
vitaly.friedman writes "Microsoft has lost another round at the EU though this time it has nothing to do with the antitrust case. This time the dispute is over fonts; specifically Segoe, one of the typefaces Microsoft wants to use in Vista. Microsoft filed its "registered community design" for the font back in January of 2004, paid the required fee, and everything was great until December." A copy of the decision is also available.
Someone patent losing court cases!
microsoft whats went wrong . the world no longer sings your song . quality is down and there is retrobution all around .
Segoe is essentially identical to Frutiger Next, and specifically the problem in the EU, is that someone at Microsoft told the EU that it *was* identical to Frutiger Next.
So, it's naturally really hard to get a trademark on a typeface that you previously said was identical to Frutiger Next.
At the bottom of the wiki page, they have a comparison of the two, the biggest different is the capital Q, where the tail is shifted slightly, and that's all. Oh, the numeral 1 also looks different. Everything else is identical.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Here's a side-by-side comparison of the two fonts.
Unpleasantries.
God! Don't let an MS'er send you Segoe documents! They embed the bloody font, and then use Rights-Management to keep you from changing it!
You have to PRINT the thing to read it.
Is a DISASTER on screen - anti-aliased or not. I'm not kidding. If I could include screen caps I would. Unreadable to the point of physical injury.
SegoeUI was created at MS to use in Titlebars and Menus. This is OK with ClearType enabled. It is still unreadable in Vista's tilebars -which arbitrarily use transparency under AeroGlass. It's not like the OS X transparency - which many people don't even notice. It does nothing to distinguish the active window in a meaningful way - and actually impairs the ability to read any title on the screen.
Talk about "not getting it". If you rip off the right things, without the right understanding, you will always fu*k them up.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
The wiki page says that Linotype wants a penny per OS copy licensed. That's vastly, vastly cheaper than trying to buy a font. And although it does come to tens of millions of dollars, it's still a lot less than fighting court cases. Why not just pay the $.01 and be done with it?
Linotype seems to own the font fair and square. Why try to cheat them out of their millimeter of green for it?
Next week I think I'll register a few new fonts:
You know, font development isn't easy -- it's much harder than it first appears to build a font that is attractive, easily readable, and infinitely scalable. Using Microsoft's new font-development technique, even a yutz like me can produce attractive fonts in minutes. Maybe Microsoft should patent the technique of "stealing from others" -- they've used it enough they might be able to get trademark protection on it as well.
Does that mean I can take the Mona Lisa, sign it, give it a new frame, call it "the smile" and then claim it as my masterpiece?
Yeah... just imagine, they might actually have to come up with something *new* instead of attempting to trademark a font cut that has been around for a long time. And all just because of those greedy EU people. About time we bomb them, right? That'll show them who's in charge of the world. Yuck yuck.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
I'm repeating myself by posting musch the same response as I did to this at Digg, but here goes anyway (my apologies to those who read it there). This kind of thing happens all the time in the world of fonts -- I used to collect them. I don't know how many virtually identical fonts I've seen, all of which were copyrighted by some company or other. Not similar, truly identical. And then there's many, many fonts that are copied from another source, such as typeface you've seen from popular movies. And these are all copyrighted too; I'm pretty sure that most of those wouldn't hold up in court. (Has anyone else noticed that it's so difficult to do nothing illegal nowadays becauses of patents and copyrights that it comes down to a matter of whether it would hold up in court? But I digress.)
Not only that, but many of these fonts are DRMed to the hilt, which the true type font format is set up for. Imagine, you recognize where they got the font from and you can't even use it to write a document to print out because it's DRMed so that the only purpose it serves on your system is so you can read web pages made with that font. So that violates fair usage too. In short, they basically get away with murder when it comes to fonts because no one is going to sue them.... or at least, hasn't so far.
One glaring example of both that springs to mind is a font that is a copy of Jimi's Hendrix's handwriting. And the maker of the font copyrighted and DRMed it. Imagine how Janie Hendrix might react if she got hold of that font and found out she couldn't even use it. How would you like it if someone copied your dead brother's handwriting to make a font and then DRMed it? (Yeah, yeah, I realize people familiar with my posts are probably Hendrixed out by now, but this a good example.) Or better still, if they copied the writing style from you?
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Naah. Microsoft is gonna burn because of their own greed coupled with their own incompetence. But then again, they have so much cash they're sitting on, they aren't going to do much but smolder for a while, and then finally figure out how to use a fire extinguisher.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Can't we go one day without Microsoft doing something immoral or illegal?
Everyone knows that Wingdings is a more readable font than Frutiger Next
It's just unbelievably IDIOTIC for a large company to steal a font AND complain about piracy, like m$ does...
I was on the team at Microsoft early in Longhorn when Segoe was being developed. MS held usability studies and consulted readibility experts and made changes and updates to Segoe on a regular basis (this was 2-4 years ago). Now, that being said, whenever a new verison of Segoe was released, it appeared identical to the previous and even today I'm extremely hard pressed to discern any difference between the 'two' fonts. AFAICT they are the same with two different names. Really beautiful screen font though!
Not really. They're both sans-serif fonts with similar characteristics and overall appearance, but any trained typographer could tell you several differences between them.
<doubleplusgeek> In general, Helvetica is squarer at the ends of its lines: look at glyphs like 't', 'f', 'r', 'j', 'c', 's', 'Q' and '&'. It's also rounder in general: 'o' is almost circular, unlike Arial, and this also shows up in things like the '%' glyph. Finally, Helvetica has completely different designs for a small number of common glyphs, particularly 'a', 'R', 'G' and some of the digits.
You might just as well say that Verdana is the same as Arial, even though it's got a proportionately larger x-height, extends the lines on glyphs like 't', 'r', 'f' and 'Q', opens up glyphs like 'c', 'S' and '9', and adds features to glyphs like 'j', 'I', 'J', '1'. To the untrained eye, it's just another sans-serif font, but to many people, such changes make a dramatic difference to (in this case) on-screen readability. </doubleplusgeek>
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Helvetica is nasty. It's too geometric. It's kind of narrow. The "1lI|" series of characters is not very distinct.
Arial is much nicer. You could use it for titles and headings on something intended to be respectable, like a resume.
Helvetica barely more respectable than Comic Sans.
There, that is my fart. It is unique, can't be copied and I'd like to trademark it please. Like everything else that is published on the internet, I'm going to throw a big fat copyright on it so nobody can steal it. Don't you dare fart like I just did, that is my intellectual property and trademark!
.. idiotic in the first place. Can they for once, just ONCE produce something quietly, release it and sell it like everyone else does?
I illustrated my point with a fart to signify that the I.T world is rapidly becoming a very smelly place to conduct business. Small companies follow the examples of larger successful companies and paranoia is highly contageous - beginning to show. How many non disclosure agreements have YOU signed this month?
I can't believe they tried to patent something so
If MS was truly concerned about covering their ass they would write more secure operating systems. They don't do that, they patent everything they possibly can to try to squeeze every last cent out of the junk they produce and have turned suing small companies into a cottage industry over stupid technicalities. This was aimed to get their 'digs' into the EU so they could snuff out anyone who stole the font they already stole.
Will each Vista PC come with an attached penis that pops out of the top and urinates "BILL WAS HERE" on your wall? If they hope to keep *any* of the market share they've enjoyed gouging over the past decades they need to do a complete about face and focus on serving the needs of their customers.
I wish I could make neat cartoons in flash. I see willy wonka's chocolate factory making fonts as secret as the ever-lasting-gob-stopper for Microsoft.
Mr Gates, You have my permission to use my newly patented {pffftwh} to blow your HEAD out of your ASS so you can actually RELEASE something useful.
They're called digital restrictions for a good reason. Maybe you know that.
No *wonder* why they had to delay Vista's release for another year or two. Think of all the source code which now has to be re-written in another font!
Its funny that when M$ get sued for using something similiar they think its outrageous. But they were more then happy to sue Lindows because it sounded like Windows (Which any non blind person can see W !=L)
Heh...and they couldn't even steal it without introducing a bug. Any one notice the serif in the numeral "1" in Segoe - which MS calls a sans-serif font? This is classic MS!
Microsoft didn't "steal" the font, they "embraced and extended" it.
Don't believe me? Look at the Segoe "1"
Character fonts patenting is a bad idea, imho. Because the fonts themselves alone don't make any sense.
A picture alone can make sense, that is carries some information.
Character fonts make sense when used to write words, sentences or simply character strings. So the fonts themselves don't carry any information. They could, but don't.
A better idea for people working in Redmond would instead be to patent words printed with a certain font as if they were pictures. Normal people calls these things "logos".
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Microsoft does not sell software specifically intended for graphic designers, or for printers (the profession *or* the hardware), or for any other specialty that would require having the latest and greatest font set.
They sell an OS and an office productivity suite geared toward Mom 'n Pop and boring suit-clad businessmen.
Microsoft really shouldn't bother getting into multi-million dollar pissing contests over where the stroke on a majuscule "Q" goes - They really only need two fonts: Arial and Lucida Console.
Some people might prefer Times New Roman (Ugh) or Tahoma on the proportional side, or Courier New on the NP side, but the actual choice really doesn't matter. Give me two fonts and call it a day.
Or to put it another way - If you care enough about the choice of font that you would complain at only having two options - You don't have anything to say, you just want a flowery way to say nothing at all (ie, advertising).