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Chinese Court Rules Microsoft Violated IP Rights
angry tapir writes "A Beijing court has ruled that Microsoft violated a Chinese company's intellectual property rights in a case over fonts used in past Windows operating systems. The Beijing Number One Intermediate People's Court ordered Microsoft to stop selling versions of Windows that use the Chinese fonts, including Windows XP. Microsoft plans to appeal the case. Microsoft originally licensed Zhongyi's intellectual property more than a decade ago for use in the Chinese version of Windows 95, according to Zhongyi. Zhongyi argues that agreement applied only to Windows 95, but that Microsoft continued to use the intellectual property in eight versions of Windows from Windows 98 to Windows XP. Vista and Windows 7 are not involved."
It fascinates me that China thinks they can simultaneously not give a shit about IP in every day practice, yet still think a ruling like this will have credibility.
You're assuming they knew. Just because the newer versions of windows have Chinese character support doesn't mean the company automatically knows its their font being used.
The designers assumed Microsoft must have a license, and the rest of the company thought they were using someone elses font.
A Chinese company trying to pinch Microsoft for IP theft. That's funny.
I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but I have to wonder what minuscule percentage of Chinese Windows installations are actually using legit copies of Windows. Based on my few years of time in Beijing and being in Chinese GOVERNMENT offices where every copy of the OS and Office that I saw used a pirated license key (yes, every last one), I can't help but get a big belly laugh out of this.
I'd type this in Chinese, but I fear that would just be piling on. :)
MS should just stop selling Windows in China, it isn't like anybody actually buys it over there anyway.
So how is it a big deal then? If the fonts are so indistinguishable should they even be copyrighted?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
In most places, the would-be victim would then be up on a manslaughter charge, which I think is not the analogy you were shooting for. Maybe try something with cars?
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
I would contend that most fonts are indistinguishable from at least a half dozen other fonts.
The guys over in the mac lab would probably disagree.
I can't distinguish between all the supposed shades of blue in a large box of crayons either (or at least not without a side by side comparison).
That's what I was getting at. Fonts can be very similar and the suits who would know about the licensing likely wouldn't know one from another without a side by side comparison. The designers would know their font at a glance but likely wouldn't know the licensing terms.
Why fight it? It seems like a much cheaper solution would be for Microsoft to pay a fee for each copy of Windows sold in China.
"It's a troll case period"
It may or may not have been a submarine case. I have already given an example as to exactly how they could have missed it. There are other scenerios.
But it is not a troll case. Troll cases are brought by companies that do not produce anything and make their money off litigation. This is a company that produces graphics that is suing because another company improperly used their IP.
Even if they did submarine it to let more damages accrue it still remains that they have legitimate IP, which Microsoft was aware of, and Microsoft used it without their permission.
The converse argument to that of OP would be:
"It fascinates me that Microsoft thinks they can bug China about software theft while simultaneously stealing Chinese IP"
If the fonts are so indistinguishable should they even be copyrighted?
In the United States, you can't copyright a font, at least, not exactly. You can copyright the name and code you used to create a font but you have no legal recourse if someone buys a copy of your font, prints it out, traces it exactly, creates an identical font and sells it under a different name. That's why you can find so many versions of what looks like the same font, often with similar names. Geneva and Helvetica (Helvetica being a name sometimes applied to Switzerland) comes immediately to mind. Futura and Avant Garde are the same, even if the names are not so obviously similar.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Clearly, Microsoft MUST withdraw WIndows 98, ME, 2000, and XP from the Chinese market, and refund the purchase money paid for said products. This should not cost Microsoft very much; after all, there can't have been more than one legitimate copy of each OS sold in-country. Microsoft would then be well-placed to declare all other copies of the affected products in the PRC illegal, and use the automatic-update feature to download a deactivating code. Microsoft should also apologize profusely to the font-sourcing company for the fact that their fonts would then be completely unused, then sell lots of Windows 7 upgrades. Oh wait, they can't actually sell Windows 7 in China, since they can't afford to pay for it due to the manipulated exchange rate for the Yuan.
It took them over 10 years to acquire enough legit Windows licenses for their company to not be countersued.
The legal part is correct, but the examples are wrong. Geneva is not a clone of Helvetica, and Avant Garde is not a clone of Futura.
The former two are members of the same typographic family (the neo-grotesques), and Helvetica did much to popularize that family, becoming at one point the most popular typeface in the world. Geneva is a separate creation in the same style. The names are similar because Helvetica cemented the neo-grotesques' association with Switzerland; many later neo-grotesques were names with Swiss themes. If you want a Helvetica clone, take Arial; it has almost the same letterforms and exactly the same metrics, and was in fact designed to substitute directly for Helvetica.
Avant Garde and Futura are likewise both in the geometric family, and Futura was likewise an early and popular example, but other than that, they are distinct. Futura has in fact been cloned as Twentieth Century, and Avant Garde as Century Gothic; both of the latter are virtually identical to the originals.
Seriously, look at these typefaces at a decent size; they're similar in the same way that, say, Star Wars and Star Trek are.