Microsoft has lost another round (PDF) at the EU—though this time it has nothing to do with the antitrust case. No, 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.

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. Heidelbeger Druckmaschinen provided Lieferschein and Rechnung (delivery certificates and invoices) to the Invalidity Division showing that they had sold this font since at least 2000. They also included a CD containing a copy of the font in question.

In response, Microsoft's German lawyers tried to argue that the CD in question did not constitute prior art because that particular CD was produced in 2005. They also argued that the invoices alone proved only that something was sold, but did not establish a definite link to the font in question. This is obviously not much of a defense, and the company did not help its case by conceding that Frutiger and Segoe "should be considered identical."

The three officers of the Invalidity Division reasoned that because the invoice contained the same identification number as the font on the CD, it could reasonably be assumed that the font in question had in fact been sold years before Microsoft filed for its "registered community design." The officers furthermore agreed that the fonts in question were identical.

"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. The finding raises the larger question of whether Microsoft ever licensed the font at all; and if they did not (and it appears that they did not), will they be on the hook for significant damages if Segoe does indeed show up in the final version of Vista?