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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!
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.
Sure you can! Just so long as you don't hang it too near near my masterpiece sculpture of "Thinking Guy," not to be confused with Rodin's "The Thinker, which has much shorter sideburns.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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.
Can't we go one day without Microsoft doing something immoral or illegal?