Microsoft, the technology giant, has failed in a key battle to have its Office software file format recognised as an international standard.

The setback, which came despite intense international lobbying by the company, threatens to jeopardise Microsoft's efforts to maintain its domination of the software used to create electronic documents. The group currently accounts for as much as 90 per cent of the market, but faces a host of new rivals.

The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), which rules on standards on a huge array of areas from digital files to the sizes of nuts and bolts, closed a vote on whether to accept Microsoft’s Open XML over the weekend.

Microsoft’s failure to secure accreditation for its document standard could prevent the group from winning a growing host of clients who insist on using “open” formats, which allow free access the blueprints to the software that underpin documents.

Governments in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Brazil, as well as the state of Massachusetts in the United States, have all insisted on such measures.

The battle has also placed Microsoft at loggerheads with IBM, the IT giant behind the OpenDocument Format, which has already been given ISO accreditation.

In the first stage of the approvals process, Microsoft failed to win the backing it needed to make the file an accepted global standard by a hair’s breadth – winning 74 per cent of the vote, just short of the required 75 per cent.

In a second step – which required the company to win two thirds of votes from a key group of 37 countries that form an information technology panel on the ISO – Microsoft fell far shorter, winning only just above 50 per cent.

Marino Marcich, the head of the Open Document Format Alliance, which has opposed Microsoft’s bid for ISO status, said: “The large number of reported no votes and abstentions demonstrates the depth of concern around the world over OOXML's interoperability and openness.”

Microsoft now has the chance to lobby unconvinced countries to try to persuade them to change their minds. “Along with their votes, the National Bodies also provided invaluable technical comments designed to improve the specification,” it said in a statement.

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