Invalidity Division, sounds like science-fiction, doesn’t it? Registered community design is not bad either. Time to start a jargon file…

[…]this time the dispute is over fonts; specifically Segoe, one of the typefaces Microsoft wants to use in Vista (the new Windows, “bringing clarity to your world”). Microsoft filed its “registered community design” for the font back in January of 2004, paid the required fee, and everything was great?until December.

Just days before the end of 2004, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG sought a “declaration of invalidity” from the Invalidity Division (yes, that is it’s real name) of the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market. As the owner of the Linotype brand, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen claimed that Microsoft’s “new” font was a blatant ripoff of Linotype’s own Frutiger LT 45 Light, which has been sold by the company for years. […]

“The typefaces of both designs have the same stroke thickness. The ratio from cap-height to descender height is equal. The proportion of character height to character pitch is identical. The type face in the specimen text does not show any differences.”
So they threw Microsoft’s application out and ordered the company to pay all the fees incurred by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen.

Read online: http://arstechnica.com/news.ar…