frutiger versus segoe or heidelberger druckmaschinen vs microsoft: declaration of invalidity.

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? | arstech

did they act more carefully back then when they cloned helvetica? normally the opinion goes like this:

For better or worse, in many countries—particularly the U.S.—while typeface names can be protected legally, typeface designs themselves are difficult to protect ...

Every typesetting manufacturer had its own Helvetica look-alike. It's quite possible that most of the "Helvetica" seen in the '70s was actually not Helvetica. | the scourge of arial

in general latin fonts differ may not be greater than 5%, i was told.

Der zuständige Mensch bei Linotype war sauer, aber er meinte, sie könnten nichts dagegen tun, weil MS gerade genug verändert habe.

es läuft eher so wie re-engineering. sie bauen die schrift so genau wie möglich nach. das reicht dann schon als eigenleistung.