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.

Comments

Segoe

[Philip K Dickhead]

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.

Penny wise, pound foolish

[jfengel]

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?

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[WhiteWolf666]

Microsoft doesn't settle until they've forced the other guy to spend millions (tens of millions?) on legal costs.

To Microsoft, its not about how much it costs MS; its about how much its costs YOU.

They're willing to spend $1,000 to for your company to spend $10, because MS has tons of cash. This is standard Microsoft fare; look at Caldera, Stacker, and many other companies that were blatantly ripped off by MS. MS does settle; just after their opponent is dead (or crippled).

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[Haeleth]

Because if they settle there, then not only do they open themselves up to the Helvetica and Palatino, but they'd have to stop the practice for the one they steal AFTER this one.

What "Helvetica"? If you're referring to Arial, then it's by no means a stolen Helvetica; they're totally different designs, and anyone who knows anything about type can tell them apart at a glance. People get annoyed about Arial because it's ugly, not because it's "stolen".

And what "Palatino"? Book Antiqua? Ancient history. Microsoft more than made up for it when they actually licensed the genuine Palatino from Linotype -- it's been bundled with Windows since Win2k.

By the way, this is nothing to do with "settling", "stealing", or "opening themselves up". This is a case of them being denied a trademark. There has been no lawsuit and no claim of damages or illegal activity: the only claim Linotype made was that Segoe was not an original design.

Nothing new here

[Mistshadow2k4]

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?

Re:Nothing new here

[Anonymous Coward]

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; ...

Stop using "typeface" and "font" as synonyms; they are not.

A typeface is the abstract appearance of the symbols: proportions, relative sizes, relative location of serifs and other features, and so forth. As an abstract idea, it is not subject to copyright or other protection.

A font is a tangible set of instructions, often taking the form of a computer program, for drawing symbols in a typeface. Like any other original, tangible, creative set of instructions, fonts may be protected by copyright. (Yes, fonts can be creative. There are many ways to approximate a typeface using a limited number of pixels, but many of them are butt-ugly.)

I'm pretty sure that most of those wouldn't hold up in court.

Which is why I'm not paying you $500 for legal advice. Font copyrights are highly enforceable in court, and have been enforced. Various companies like Linotype have also been quite successful at defending their type-related trademarks.

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?

Spare us the oh-so-special angst. Avoiding crime has been a matter of what you can get away with since legal codes were first invented.

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.

Yeah, that would really suck for her to not be able to freeload on somebody else's font design work. Cry me a river. Boo hoo hoo.

Re:In case you didn't know

[WhiteWolf666]

Because it's entirely different if it was their font designer who said it or if it was a random employee whom they asked "hey, do these two look the same to you?"

IIRC, their attorney said it infront of the board of inquiry.

Their defense was not, "The Fonts are Different".

Their defense was, "The Fonts are the same, but they have no proof they sold it first, because although the invoice they show you is from 2000, the CD they presented was pressed in 2005."

That's a goofy defense.