Sendo Accuses MS of Stealing Smartphone IP

Nate B. writes "According this article in The Inquirer, it seems that Sendo, a UK based development house, has filed suit in Texas as of December 23 to recoup monetary damages for IP it claims Microsoft stole. From the article, 'The company's grievance is that after years of working closely with Microsoft on the development of Windows Smartphone 2002, the fruits of their endeavours were handed straight over to HTC, which manufactures the SPV handset for Orange.' The story also includes this cute footnote, 'When Sendo announced it was to receive funding from Microsoft, I and some other British journalists asked Sendo's Hugh Brogan at the press briefing, in the London Waldorf, whether he wasn't afraid that the company might just take its information and then dump his firm. He claimed then there was no possibility of that.'" Seems there was more to this story than originally thought.

Comments

Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[burgburgburg]

Are there any small companies that MS has had dealings with that they haven't royally screwed over? Either directly stealing their work or after working "with" them, coming out with a competing product (with borrowed IP) that severely undercut them?

It just seems like the first day MS approaches you is the day you should start preparing the lawsuit against them.

Re:Any small companies that MS hasn't screwed?

[leandrod]

> any small companies that MS has had dealings with that they haven't royally screwed over?

Not only small. IBM, Sybase, Orange... I think even Spyglass was not so small at the time.

Old vs New Advice

[ackthpt]

Old advice:
Talk softly and carry a big stick.

New advice:
Be huge, take IP, run the little guy down with your army of lawyers.

Not saying this is happening, but it's certainly a familiar pattern with Microsoft.

Interesting

[Quill_28]

My company has had dealing with Microsoft, yet never had a sale. The reason:

We commonly sell source code to our customers but they usually are limited to a specific product family.

Everytime we deal with them they will not agree the code will turn up in other areas of microsoft, which we deem unacceptable and the deal is off. In our area, MS is not important so it's not a big deal.

I haven't read the article but i wonder how many times, others business "have" to deal with MS overlook things like the above, realize they have been screwed and then sue. Or get greedy for the MS deal, get screwed and then sue. Or maybe just plained got screwed by ole MS.

Or maybe it's all over my head and just business as usual. Yeah that's probably it.

Re:List of past cases?

[Otis_INF]

Err no. To enlighten you a bit:
Apple: Rip-off
Hardly. Xerox was ripped of by both MS and Apple (and others)

IBM: OS/2
It was a joined effort. MS has worked on OS/2 as well. No-one talks about the fact that IBM used MS' work when selling OS/2

Sendo: Rip-off
This is to be seen. If Sendo signed a contract MS could use the material, Sendo'll stay empty handed. And most of the time when it comes to a Company A sues company B because of IP theft it is basicly regret of company A that they've signed the wrong contract with B.

Sun: Java & C#
Come on... Both have C++ as their predecessor. If you say C# is based on Java, you then claim also that Java is the start of a new, unique path in the languages-tree. But that's not true. Java is based on C++, so C# is also based on C++.

Sybase: SQL Server
Also very wrong. MS and Sybase worked together on SQLServer, using a codebase provided by Sybase. However after 6.0 MS decided to part ways with Sybase, resulting in a 100% rewrite of SQLServer in v7.0.

Besides that, doing business with companies when IP is involved is a thing where you have to keep your IP attorney at hand for most of the time: nail everything off in tight contracts so no-one can fool you, steal your IP or rip you off in the long run. But what happens most of the time is this:

Company A, large big company, decides it's cheaper to work together with company B, small company with some intellectual property A wants. A does a proposal to B, which B rejects because it means B is selling the IP to A for a bargain. A then decides it is perhaps better to work it out in-house, so leaves B alone. B sees its targetmarket soon be transfered to the targetmarket of A, so decides to accept the offer of A. However, after a few years, B regrets this decision and wants to turn back the tables. No can do. Contracts are signed, B should have payed more attention. B can go to court, perhaps A will settle the case for some money to stop the bad press, but that will be all.

A isn't necessarily Microsoft. All big companies have this kind of cases regularly, especially companies who are in markets where having IP is having the advantage over your competitors.