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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."
While it seems quite clear that InterTrust has the upperhand don't you think it devious that they'd wait until MS had DRM in all of their latest products before bringing up a lawsuit? Do you think a judge will notice this?
Computer Geek Proverb: Linux is only free if your time is worthless.
Intertrust for stupid DRM?
There's nothing stupid about Intertrust's DRM designs. They're intended to protect the rights of the licensee just as much as the rights of the licensor. I wrote some pretty lengthy posts about this in the last Intertrust thread; if you're interested in knowing more, I'd suggest you go back and read them and the surrounding discussion for more information.
And if you're not interested in knowing more, I'd suggest, respectfully, that you not call it "stupid DRM."
I write in my journal
If Microsoft doesn't own the patents on DRM, and will have to pay royalties to include it, what incentive will they have to include it in their operating systems?
Black and grey are both shades of white.
No- they should no longer have any need of a media tax because all movies, music and software would be (in their eyes) completely uncopyable.
Therefore the only reason people would buy blank media would be for their own backups.
graspee
The worldwide owner of DRM technology patents capable of stopping the XBox being sold will be Sony, the people who make the PlayStation? That's hilarious.
Remember back in the day when Sony fought like hell to make VCRs legal, saying consumers had a right to copy? At Sony Music, do they look back on those court cases and laugh?
That's the nightmare scenario, sure. But I can see some good outcomes, too:
... and eventually we end up with a world where content is available primarily on less restricted platforms. Alternately, Philips stays in the fight and the rest of the content world just kind of grows around the quagmire.
1) InterTrust wins, and wins big. Maybe they then get bought out by Sony and Philips, maybe not; either way, Microsoft has to pay some huge amount of money (and maybe continuous royalties) to someone else -- or scrap years of work on their products and start over. Bad for Microsoft == good for pretty much everyone else in the world. And Microsoft can't just buy InterTrust because they've spent so much damn money paying off the settlement, and/or Sony and Philips (which between them can probably outspend even Billy-boy) throw in their money to keep it from happening.
2) InterTrust loses, and loses hard enough to set a precedent against questionable patents. Although this would be good for Microsoft in the short term, it might be good for everyone in the long term by establishing the precedent that ideas aren't patentable, only implementations, which is the way it should be all along. Unfortunately the article doesn't go into enough detail to judge whether that's a possible outcome, but if it did happen, it would be a Good Thing.
3) The case stalemates (probably because, as in the anti-trust case, Microsoft is clearly guilty, but their money and name recognition keep the case in endless appeals) and Sony and Microsoft end up fighting a years-long war with Intertrust as the proxy. Meanwhile, Philips dissasociates itself from the case and starts working with more consumer-friendly companies
(2), which would probably be the most useful in the long term, is also IMO the least likely. But (1) and (3) seem like real possibilities.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It never worked. So, like all internet boom companies that had ideas, but just vapourware, they are reduced to suing everyone in sight. This is one I want to see Microsoft win.
Actually, MS are salivating over DRM for an entirely different reason: they think business will pay them pots of cash for it.
Just imagine how good a "your documents can't be leaked, can't be stolen, changes can be tracked and you have total control over which employees see what" must sound. It'd make business confidentiality much easier. Pay-per-play is a lucrative area, but DRM has far wider uses than just that.
I've been told by MS execs that there is kind of an internal debate raging about whether micropayments or DRM is the way forward, but that DRM was winning because it could be commercialised and sold as a feature to business. They didn't seem to regard the content industry as the main target for it: individuals and organizations who wished to control their own business information were a big deal.
Microsoft LOVES patents. They even love paying for them AT A VERY high price. It helps exclude the competition.
The outcome is already known, Microsoft will capitulate with InterTrust and will make it cost huge bucks. InterTrust then gets to yell "see, my patents stand up to scrutiny and they are really valuable" and nukes everyone else out of the DRM buisness by charging over the top for licencing fees.
Fortunately for us, DRM is a flawed concept and anyone who ever tries to get to close to it ends up paying with lost customers and diminsihed loyalty.
A paper by Carl Shapiro discusses this argument better than my rant.
BTW - this practice is not exclusive to Microsoft.
digital rights management
Please remember that it's 'Digital Restrictions Management'.
There are quite a few stories out there about companies who were a) negotiating technology deals with Microsoft, b) the deal fell through, and c) Microsoft introduced a technology of their own with striking similarities.
The most conspicuous was probably the Stac patent-infringement suit.
What these stories have in common is: first, it is probably not so much a case of Microsoft outright stealing technical details, but more "we like that general approach, this company has shown us that it works, let's do it that way ourselves." For every case of outright infringement, there are probably a dozen more of moral, but not legal theft of ideas.
Second, and more ominous, even in those cases like Stac where Microsoft was challenged in court and lost, in the long run it didn't matter. Stacker is a distant memory, Stac Electronics is all but forgotten, and their website isn't responding right now...
This would be a Good Thing (tm).
As an individual who was (un)fortunate enough to use some early products based on that Intertrust SDK, I can tell you that the system was a disaster. That is to say, it certainly worked well enough at protecting content... it just tended to protect it from legitimate users as well as unauthorized ones.
Of course, I can't even tell you if it really did protect content from unauthorized users, because the company kept such ultra-tight control of their product that real cracking attempts were all but impossible. I'm told that you had to install special physical security arrangements in an office before you could even get a look at the damned SDK. Not to mention a pile of NDAs and licenses that pretty much kept you from even trying to get it over 60mph (metaphorically speaking.)
As a company trying to produce a real, tangible product, Intertrust was a disaster. Whether their software could have eventually lived up to the hype we'll never know, because from their actions it appears that they had were either incompetent or were going out of their way to avoid producing a viable product. What they were really good at doing was convincing other companies-- sight unseen-- that they were the greatest thing since sliced bread. The companies who did eventually use their product all went in enthusiastic and raving, and came out indifferent.
From the enthusiasm of the companies out to buy them, it certainly looks like Intertrust haven't lost their touch at selling themselves. And from the effort they're throwing into this lawsuit, it sure looks like Intertrust wants to go into this deal with more than just their product (good idea, guys).