Slashdot Mirror
InterTrust Says It Owns DRM, Sues Microsoft
Rinisari writes "Fortune.com has a story about Santa Clara-based InterTrust Technologies is claiming that their suite of 26 issued patents and 85 pending patents covers digital rights management technology currently in use by Microsoft. InterTrust is seeking an injunction barring distribution of about 85% of Microsoft's product line, including WindowsXP, OfficeXP, and Xbox. Slashdot previously mentioned InterTrust when Sony and Philips announced they were attempting to buy ( and still are attempting to buy) the DRM outfit."
Anybody who takes on one of the world's largest corporations (with probably the most high-paid lawyers on its payroll) and attempts to shut down 85% of their product line is very courageous indeed.
I wonder what makes them think they can pull it off.
This space left intentionally blank.
..but if Intertrust wins, it could lead to a similar 'media tax' that the RIAA wants people to pay when they buy CD-R's and other forms of recordable media.
Absolutely one of the dumbest lawsuits I have ever seen. As soon as Intertrust can prove that Microsoft's DRM support has somehow cost InterTrust any money then hell can freeze over.
If anyone actually USED digital rights management maybe InterTrust would have grounds for a lawsuit. But nobody does.
Doesn't matter. The only winners here are the IP lawyers, and we all love IP lawyers, right?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
There is everything stupid about them. One of their 26 patents is 500 pages and lists clsoe to 1500 claims, or was it 2000? The text showed every sign of having been produced using an automated tool.
The field of DRM long predates Intertrust and their patents.
At this point the company is down to a bunch of lawyers and they have staked the entire company on the Microsoft suit. They don't have any engineering at this point, it is pure patent exploitation.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
You can bet the RIAA/MPAA will give generously and help out with Microsoft advertising - considering they'd be the only operating system in town with DRM.
Apple's already taken an anti-DRM stance, and DRM will never work on Linux simply because there's no way you can force it down the throats of your users.
Microsoft is alread paying royalties on plenty of stuff. You didn't think they came up with scandisk and defrag, did you?
Well, they had to wait until Microsoft had actually infringed on their patents before filing a suit. From the article, it seems pretty clear to me that they tried to negotiate a legitimate deal and Microsoft, as usual, screwed them over.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
You ... you ... Nazi! ;-)
Rule of law! Rule of law! Go, team!
I do agree. DRM doesn't hurt people, people hurt people. Although technically there must be such a thing as "stupid DRM," as in DRM easily subverted.
It's quite something to hear of Microsoft disrespecting the intellectual property of others. Something routine, that is. Maybe IP isn't all bad, hmm?
Time to get out in the sunshine....
If MS is forced to remove any and all DRM code, they'll just issue a hotfix that'll remove it. I don't see it bringing down Windows.
Now, it may hurt their Windows Media format being used by Hollywood-types since DRM was one of its selling points.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
InterTrust own a whole bunch of patents. In fact, that is about all they own. They derive basically all their income from suing other companies who in any way attempt to limit the copying and transferrability of works in the digital space. (a.k.a. Digital Rights Management)
I expect them to sue: Microsoft, OpenTV, Liberate, PowerTV, Nagravision, NDS, Canal Plus, and just about anyone who has anything to do with conditional access if they haven't already.
You can thank overly broad patent protection that allows you to patent an idea (remember 1-click ordering), instead of forcing the patent holder to develop a product or implementation that actually utilizes the idea.
The only thing InterTrust has ever done is create a major payday for lawyers.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First off, I have no doubt that they'll sell out. I cannot imagine anyone, no matter how crazy, refusing an offer of nearly $500 million in cash. Which means this will become, essentially, Sony vs Microsoft. (hmm, where ELSE is that battle happening) And either way it goes, it's not going to do the consumer the slightest bit of good. (ok, well, it could force the X-Box off the market and thereby let Rare go back to making Nintendo and PS games. That's good, right?) Really, does anyone else feel like we're just standing around watching Godzilla and Rodan duke it out, with nothing to do but pray they don't trod upon us?
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Which would have been in NT4.0/Windows Media 6.4 days, with DRM1 for Windows Media. So, a wait for 3 years?
Me, I'm cheering for endless litigation. That will delay any implementation of DRM. If MS fights to be a player in this arena, that's what you'll see. OTOH, if InterTrust is just looking to shake them down for the rights to use DRM, they might well pay up.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
I hope Microsoft gets the shaft on this. MS has a long history of running roughshod over other company's patents, and has been sucessfully sued for patent infringement and copyright violation (including using source code it has no rights to in it's products) several times. If there is a clearer case of corporate evil out there than what is going on here, I don't know about it.
InterTrust is clearly the originator of DRM technologies. They have already implemented software products in a variety of devices such as MP3 players. Microsoft is clearly just trying to rip off a technology invented and developed by a much smaller company.
Noting the history of MS and it's policy, this is the mating ritual of a company that wants to get bought by MS. They are just making sure that their asking price gets accepted.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Wouldn't it be valuable to start a "Prior Art Foundation" where EVERYONE could contribute ideas, process or whatever, and that the "prior art foundation" will only certify at what date the document arrived at the "Prior Art Database". Add some metadata and serach capabilities and we'd be able to cover mostly anything in 5 years, and overly broad patents days will be over? I mean, we should all submit ALL kind of idea, even if stupid , obvious or the "only way to do it" abeit trivially. It doesn't matter if we'd want to do any of those, but at least there would be specific documentation somebody said that first, so that they can't claim a patent. Even worst, they'd have to research this HUGE archive of "anti-patent minefield" because if not, they might end up putting resources in a field that is anti-mined, so they want to be able to go sue happy as they planned (ie: 0 unfair revenue, which is what they want).
unfinished: (adj.)
Like they wouldn't have the money to do THAT a few thousand times over?
Anyone who is going to go up against MS has to be doing it without ANY hope of financial gain, and a willingness to stay in court for as long as it takes (even years) before they give up trying. Somehow, I don't think Intertrust and their lawyers are going to be willing to play martyr.
Moral: don't play chicken with a bus.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There is everything stupid about them. One of their 26 patents is 500 pages and lists clsoe to 1500 claims, or was it 2000? The text showed every sign of having been produced using an automated tool.
How exactly, does the fact of a large patent with many claims indicate that the patent is "stupid," whatever you mean by that? What possible implication are we to draw from "the text showed every sign of having been produced using an automated tool?" That a computer filed the application?
Clearly it is ludicrous to dispute whether or not a given patent is "stupid," the term has no precise meaning that can be proved or disproved. Accordingly, I won't join that debate except to note that the validity and enforceability of the patent is not implicated or even seriously challenged by any of these issues.
It is meaningless, therefore, to whine about a patent being "stupid." It is certainly meaningless to whine about being "stupid" for such reasons.
The field of DRM long predates Intertrust and their patents.
Better, as this suggests some appreciation of the notion of patent validity being related to prior art. However, this criticism ias stated is likewise meaningless, for it is true of virtually every valid patent that ever issued -- the "field of" the subject matter of a patent has nothing to do with the validity of its particular claims.
The question isn't whether a prior field or reference reads on (that is to say, encompasses) a patent claim, but to the contrary, whether the patent claim reads on a particular reference. While the field of chairs may have long pre-existed the invention of a rocking chair, the rocking chair may nevertheless be patentable by a properly differentiated claim.
If Zeinfeld disdains any particular one of the 1500 claims he considers stupid, a more particularized argument might be to identify the specific reference that he claims antedates the patent, and to point out that each and every limitation of the claim appears in that reference. Otherwise, he is simply spitting into the wind.
At this point the company is down to a bunch of lawyers and they have staked the entire company on the Microsoft suit. They don't have any engineering at this point, it is pure patent exploitation.
Define patent exploitation. (Or is it simply synonymous with "stupid"?) Certainly, the fact that the company might not have any engineers has nothing to do with whether the patent is enforceable against Microsoft. Indeed, Microsoft is NOTORIOUS for waiting out smaller companies, ignoring their IP and fighting a patent suit until the company has gone bankrupt. (The STAC case, which Microsoft ultimately lost to the tune of $100M is a case in point.) Indeed, in identifying who was the patent exploiter in STAC, a judge and jury found it was Microsoft, not the shell that remained of a formerly vital company when Microsoft was done beating on them.
It is not uncommon that a small company or individual inventor gets ignored, and defenders of the industry puff about "patent exploitation" by a non-practicing inventor or his successors-in-interest. It takes BIG bucks to assert a patent claim against a real, collectible company, often way more than any company might have. It is not uncommon that the assets end up in a corporation formed solely for the purpose of obtaining a judgment -- not because the new corporation is the patent exploiter, but because the corporation owned property that was exploited by the defendant.
It might certainly be the case that this plaintiff is overreaching with awful or invalid patents. It might certainly be the case that Microsoft simply has been thumbing its nose at a smaller company. But this critic simply hasn't made his case with the facts he asserts here.
So microsoft will have to licence/pay royalties on DRM technologies.... they will just pass the cost onto the end user with a higher price.
DRM will fail in the long run, PERIOD. This is what Microsoft and others simply refuse to admit. This is what most if not all of us here on /. have come to a consensus on, right? Wasn't someone told to STFU by the RIAA... over a paper criticizing a DRM idea called the Secure Digital Music Initiative?
If Microsoft sells their flavor (or any flavor) of DRM to a content creator under the impression that it is 100% secure, they're flat out liars. All it takes is *one* person to crack the code, and release it over the 'net. Microsoft realizes they can't offer 100% security, I'm sure. Since they do realize this, they're going to tell their clients that their stab at DRM is better than no DRM at all, and companies are going to bite.. as they already are.
But it all comes down to this.
The instant people can't use their Windows computer to upload files to their MP3 player, a dangerous consumer backlash will occur. People won't buy the new flavor of Windows if it prevents them from ripping their own CDs, or if they find out they can't use Kazaa with it either.
Furthermore, nobody cares about WMA, which is a huge problem for Microsoft considering they NEED to use WMA for their DRM to work in the first place.
Truth is, consumers have already spoken. They want iPods, not the SDMI crap that Sony put out and forces NetMD and MemoryStick players to use.
SDMI ~ Add a few O's and replace with I with a Y and it better represents what it attempts^Hed to achieve.
that it will come down to lawyers, guns, and money?