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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.
I mean, M$ has this history of embrace and extend in technology, and embrace and nuke in corporate relationships.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
"We're still looking over the contract to see the ramifications of the "we owe you nothing" clause."
Microsoft officials declined to comment at press time.
Are you on drug(s)?!! Why not?
someone else sues M$oft for some kind of BBP (Bad Business Practices). Seriously, I'm not attempting to sound like a troll, or be overly inflammatory, but we've seen this over and over. M$oft does something bad, they waste time in court, nothing happens. Yep, they've got to include Java now, but what about all the other points of their recent suits which they've supposedly lost? Nothing's changed, they're still as big a monopoly as before, and do ONLY what they want to do, since they have to answer to ultimately NO ONE. If anyone really wants to affect M$oft, how about this........don't buy their products. A hit in the pocketbook is the only thing they'll ever understand, and that'll never happen until people quit buying their products.
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
4="Advertise, brand , steel, cheat, lie, lobby, tie your customers in"
It works for most companies/governments/countries, and not just the 'evil' ones.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It just seems like the first day MS approaches you is the day you should start preparing the lawsuit against them.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Yeah, but when you escort her home after the prom and find out the "girl" is really a man who now tells you to bite the pillow, this'll hurt a little, I think you have a right to be upset...
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
1) Make deal with Microsoft. 2) Get screwed by Microsoft. 3) ??? 4) Profit!
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
They still have the IP, nobody took it from them, yadda yadda yadda.
take verb - to get into one's hands or into one's possession, power, or control
steal verb - to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice
Just because Sendo still have a copy does not mean it was not taken or stoeln. IP is something that can be possessed by more than one party. That does not mean that it cannot be taken or stolen.
Definitions taken from Merriam Webster
The Register also had an article about this on monday..
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
This is news? Microsoft is constantly battling people in court! This is Just Another Lawsuit, folks. By the way, if you are interested, take a look at Computerworld's excellent coverage of Microsoft's legal battles:
Microsoft's Legal Battles
How to Download YouTube Videos
they have hopes of making it BIG with the BIGgest beast on the block. They don't think they will get screwed over... and when they do, they seem surprised. Working with MS and WM are like replying to MLM schemes on the net. Over and over people are warned about internet scams but "it will never happen to me!" Yeah right. MS and WM just do it on a corporate scale.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
film at 11
Why don't we just have a weekly "screwed by M$ this week" special, like the slashback? Would help condense a lot of stories, ranting and general anti-M$ flaming into a few places.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It does crashes a lot, besides not installing unsigned apps, being slow and having several other problems.
Looks like MS took an unfinished product from Sendo and launched it thru other outlets. I would not be surprised if Sendo had left it unfinished on purpose, either that or MS did not let them have access to the source code to fix it and them they called it quits.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Where are all of the "information wants to be free" folks now? What, anyone should be able to take and use any information any way they want so long as they are not Microsoft?
The interesting thing is that MS seems to be an expert at entering into these sorts of strategic alliances without incurring any burden of responsibility. In this case MS took the technology, took the manufacturing rights, and left Sendo with nothing. One would think the contract would have prevented this, or specified financial consequences if MS did such a thing. They certainly have a history of destroying partners, and it seems like prudent partner would take this history into account. The MS lawyers and sales people must be excellent con men if they can routinely negotiate deals like this.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
If you are a monopoly, then everyone is a competitor. The key technology is the written contract, not software.
Amazingly, you can usually find companies to agree to these contracts for nothing. They'll sign just to be your friend.
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
the other night I had a problem with my routers IP... I called tech support and they had me /release and /renew it.
maybe that would help.
((covers ears so as to not hear 1,000,000 geeks groan at once for such bad geek humor))
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
...is like making a deal with the Borg. They will take advantage of you until you are no longer needed. Then you're screwed. The Bill Gates Borg picture started out as a joke but seems to be more and more fitting each day.
:)
Reminds me of that Voyager episode called "Scorpion" where the crew tried to make a deal with the Borg. Of course the Borg tried to screw them over in the end. The only good thing about it is it brought us Seven of Nine.
That's the usuall /. mantra around here. But to a lot of people it only applies if the IP belongs to a big company like IBM or MS. If it's a small company against a big company then IP has to be protected.
Obviously you've missed all the discussions on slashdot about Napster, open source, piracy, etc.
He was clearly being sarcastic.
1) Bash Microsoft
2) ???
3) Karma!
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Not to be too quick to defend Microsoft (certainly not on /.), but the article didn't actually given any details on Sendo's complaint. What is it that Microsoft has "stolen" from them? For all we know right now, it's something stupidly obvious like "a method for simulating pushbuttons on an LCD" or "pressing talk without entering a number automatically redials the last number called". There's probably more to it than this, but all these posts are so quick to assume Microsoft's guilt without having any substantial information other than the fact that a suit has been filed. If I were Sendo, I'd probably claim Microsoft was oppressing me too -- hell, everyone assumes it anyhow so what's there to lose? Even the article's quote about the case "having merit" came from Sendo themselves. Well of course *they're* going to say that! I'd be much more impressed if somebody independent said the same thing.
Yeah, Microsoft's business practices are shady at best, but we don't have any substantial information about Sendo's claims at all right now, so it seems foolish to forming opinions so prematurely.
The fact that Microsoft invested money in Sendo doesn't make this all clear cut. Especially given the reason why Microsoft invested money was nullified when Sendo dropped out of the market.
I guess I'm just wondering if Sendo intends on giving the money back? If not, could not Microsoft simply consider it payment for the disagreement?
Microsoft Bob, Microsoft Network as it was intended (a separate MS network), hailstorm and a slew of other troubled products from MS havent been that successful. They get is "right" sometimes but not because of superior tech, compare IE6 to Mozilla and it should be obvious what happens with MS "innovation" once competition is eliminated.
I would say that almost every single product originating from inside Redmond sucks really hard. only the ones that are bought from the outside is usable.
HTTP/1.1 400
Sendo should have protected their intellectual property using Digital Rights Management technology. If only they had set the "Do not share with low-cost manufacturers" flag.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
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.
Here's the Reuters story on this from a few days ago which contains more information.
"Microsoft's secret plan was to plunder the small company of its proprietary information, technical expertise, market knowledge, customers and prospective customers," the filing said.
So now stealing "customers and prospective customers" is a crime for a competitor to commit? Sounds like a case of another company (hint, Sun) which can't achieve success through selling its product so hopes to achieve it through litigation.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Could you elaborate on these for those of us who are ignorant to the facts of each case.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
If Sendo had the brains to check out what microsoft does with PocketPC, AutoPC, etc, they would realize that MS is in these businesses to sell a uniform platform to people who build hardware that will support it. Eg, what's the real difference between the recent Toshiba PocketPC, Compaq Ipaq, and HP Jornandas? Pretty much nothing. They're all arm, all running PocketPC os, and there really isn't anything that distinguishes them other than some stylistic differences.
MS must have made it clear to Sendo in their deal that they were going to develop a generic cellphone OS that other companies can just bundle in with their telephones.
Anyhow, if Sendo had decided to sue the moment they decided to drop Smartphone, I would have given their lawsuit more credence. Right now, it looks like they're trying to hit up MS to get some $$ before they can get their phone design converted over to Symbian.
Hell, someone should publish the contract that the two companies agreed too. It just a waste of energy to speculate on what happened.
Well, since most slashdotters don't believe in intellectual property, they should obviously side with microsoft.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
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.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Remember the old MS-DOS days and M$'s illegal bundling of Stac software (DriveSpace, DoubleSpace, whatever)... and in return for Stac's suit, they either bought them out or changed the software enough not to infringe further on the Stac IP (AFAIK, it was a long time ago, hence the details being rather sketchy).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Are IP's really so scarce that companies are resorting to stealing them to stay afloat?!
/32, but just you wait until we have our first nuclear exchanges over those last few /8's!
It's obviously time for us to migrate to IPv6, before this escalates and we have our first full scale war over netblocks.
Oh, sure, it's going to start with this sort of scuffle over a
Sounds almost exactly like what happened to Go! Computers...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Go! Computer - PenPoint OS (ripped off to becom Pen Windows)
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Why are these being modded to offtopic? Do the moderators not "get" the analogy here?
to John Gotti.
Yes, if you call that shit you eat food.
Unlikely that a copyright being void requires you to release the source code. More likely just means people can make copies of their existing files with impunity, within the jurisdiction of that court. Of course, IANAL, IJFLCE (I just frequent law.cornell.edu).
What was the reason Microsoft gave for avoiding the "pac-man like" GPL again?
It's been a long time.
uhm, no...you didn't get it any more than the Offtopic mods did. You see, my post wasn't about homosexuality or any kinda gay bashing, it was about pretending to be one thing then screwing over the people you fooled when you reveal your true self, I was hoping with such an obvious analogy in the prom context I wouldn't have to explain it...but I guess it's easier to see malicious intent where there is none than to think and try to actually understand? Now put up your sword and take off that shining armor sir knight, there's little need for you here.
Oh, two more things, I'm not american, and are you trying to offend me by implying that I'm homosexual? Sorry, can't really take offense at that, interesting you should chose that as an insult though, some hidden homophobia?
Now we're offtopic
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Xerox didn't know what they had, and the technology was languishing. Xerox did profit from the deal, of course, so did Apple.
photosMy Photostream
Stacker - Stolen compression technology, case later settled by MS.
m l
Stacker was a PATENT INFRINGEMENT CASE, not a stolen IP case.
here's some words from an
expert in the field of compression and patents:
http://www.ross.net/compression/
" Waterworth patented a LZ77 variant (US Patent 4701745). This algorithm
is generally referred to as as LZRW1, because Ross Williams reinvented
it later and posted it on comp.compression on April 22, 1991. The same
algorithm has later been patented by Gibson & Graybill (US Patent
5049881). The patent office failed to recognize that the same algorithm
was patented twice, even though the wording used in the two patents is
very similar.
The Waterworth patent is now owned by Stac, which won a lawsuit against
Microsoft, concerning the compression feature of MS-DOS 6.0. Damages
awarded were $120 million. (Microsoft and Stac later settled out of
court.) "
From his resume: "Consulting to Microsoft: In 1993 Stac initiated a
software patent lawsuit against Microsoft over the doublespace data
compression feature of MS-DOS 6. As part of its defence, Microsoft
retained me as an expert in text data compression. Tasks involved
searching for prior art and evaluating patents. "
Most importantly, however:
http://www.ross.net/compression/introduction.ht
"Unfortunately, during this happy rollout, some patents popped out of
the US patent system that cast a shadow over the LZRW series algorithms,
and they became effectively unuseable in any practical application. If
you want to use them in any product (whether free or commercial), you
will have to do some in-depth patent homework and algorithm
development/modification so as to avoid infringement. If you think
that's easy, then you should be aware that Microsoft tried to use an
LZ77/LZRW1/etc variant, specifically designed not to infringe existing
patents, in its MS-DOS V6 operating system, and ended up having to pay
Stac about $80m in the resulting patent lawsuit. For this reason, I
would like to take this opportunity to state that the code provided in
this web (and FTP site) is provided with the intention that it be used
for educational and recreational use only. "
Coming soon - pyrogyra
If true, this is actually much more serious than most IP infringement, because it also involves plagiarism and industrial espionage. It's as if some other company hacked into Microsoft's servers, downloaded the Windows source code, edited it to remove all the copyright messages and other text that refereced Microsoft as the authors, then started selling its own version of Windows.
Of course, Sendo could be lying. Even Bill Gates is innocent until proven guilty.
umm.... The problem is that Microsoft loses money beacuse the volume is low, windows has a high volume.
Distribnution costs are next to nothing, and marketing and development are single hits.
If the volume of sales of windows dropped then they would start to lose money.
If the volume of sales of say exchange increased then they would start to make money.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Hey, I explained why I chose that particular analogy above, if you're offended by my point, say so, if you're offended because it happened to be about a transexual, tough, I chose my analogy because it conveyed the point well in the context the parent post started. I didn't mean to offend anyone and I don't think there's anything offensive in my comparison, it's all in your head.
Go on and point out offending posts when you see them, more power to ya. But don't go looking for things to offend you where there's no intent.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Yes, but MS Win was a direct rip-off of the Apple Macintosh System, not of the Xerox Alto. Perhaps we would have had a better MS WXP now if its ancestry had been more than a toy...
Anyway, the point is that MS built a relationship with Apple, then abused it by doing what it asserted it would not do. Granted they have been prompted by Apple being stubborn about leaving off OEMs MS depended on, such as Compaq.
Yes, but then MS deceived IBM on its commitment to OS/2 until they had MS W16 3.1 ready. Then they refused to make MS W32 an open standard on which OS/2 could compete.
Agreed, but apart from the common type system C# has little point in existing other than providing MS its own Java competitor geared to keep and foster a preference for the MS W32 OS. Also, MS tried first to create its own Java quirks to the same effect.
It hardly matters, as by then they had learned all they wanted from Sybase. They sucked all the knowledge they wanted, then dumped their partner. As always.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Microsoft Windows was a direct rip-off from Apple, whom Microsoft had befriended by creating applications for their then-nascent platform.
BeOS could not sell their system because MS had exclusivity contracts with OEMs.
IBM codeveloped OS/2 with MS, then the agreement was broken and MS started playing its FUD, exclusive contracts etc.
NeXT had a real industrial strength, OO OS. MS promised that MS WNT was industrial strength, and Cairo would be OO. This, together with exclusive contracts, killed NeXTStep. MS WXP still is not reliable, and Cairo still is not here.
Orange is selling a substandard product that was ripped off from Sendo. MS did not dare sell it under its own brand. Perhaps they will after Orange and others take the flak and correct the bugs.
Sendo has put tremendous effort in making MS WCE useable in a phone, but where denied enough access to source code. Now their work has showed up in HTC.
Spyglass was promised a percentage on MS IE revenue. Then MS IE was bundled with the OS and given away for free, so no revenue to calculate a percentage on.
Sun signed a license agreement with MS in which MS promised to keep Java cross platform. First they tried corrupting Java to make it MS W32-specific, then they stopped distributing it until they could finish their competitor, C#.
Sybase taught MS everything they know about databases, and even shared the source code for their SQL DBMS. MS learned what they could, then broke the partnership.
Other people have added:
Digital Research had the original CP/M, of which MS-DOS was a poor imitation. Later MS played FUD and exclusivity to crush DR-DOS.
Stac Eletronics created the filesystem compression utility when disks were expensive and slow. Microsoft copied parts of Stacker in its Doublespace.
Also mentioned were 3Com (NetBEUI, NetBIOS & SMB), Go!Computing (PenPoint) and Silicon Graphics (OpenGL), but I am not familiar with the details in these cases.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Compromise on Paul McCartney - can we agree to send him to Canada?
I know shit all about football, I don't think anyone plays it in Scotland any more.
Most people are right-handed, so we drive on the left so they can change gear with their left hand (keeping their "good" hand on the steering wheel). We use manual gearboxes over here because slushboxes are for wusses who can't drive.
Princess Di probably wasn't a slut, but she was pretty bloody useless. Now the Russians, they really know how to treat royalty....
of deja vu. You know, the feeling that you've seen something before? Something like Windows, in this case. Back in the days when Xerox PARC, Apple, and OS/2 were new and exciting.
C|N>K
"Apple licensed stuff from Xerox"
What! What I heard when I was at Xerox was that they were going to sue Apple but waited too long. I could be wrong, do you have a reference to back up your claim?
You have all the facts right. Yes, MS competitors, including Sun and Oracle (not SUN or ORACLE, these are not acronyms nor abbreviations), have been incredibly stupid, including trying to play MS' game when it is a well-known fact only MS can own its own game. But you fail in interpretation of the facts. Mostly MS competitors have been more stupid, but less dishonest than MS itself. So yes, MS deserves all the lawsuits and actually some punishment too. But no, there is no point in suing someone for stupidity.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
"As others have posted, Apple did not 'rip-off' anything from Xerox. MS was the copycat who didn't ask."
Well, that's the Apple spin on history. Xerox actually sued Apple over their GUI, so it's clear that they didn't believe they gave them permission to use it.
That's the usuall /. mantra around here. But to a lot of people it only applies if the IP belongs to a big company like IBM or MS. If it's a small company against a big company then IP has to be protected.
Seems the point is that all IP should have the same protection. Our current laws give huge advantages to big companies with lots of lawyers. If we want to change *all* the laws, fine... until then, the big companies should be held to the same standards that they hold others to.
Besides, MS didn't steal Sendo's IP in order to make it publicly available. They stole it in order to keep it and make money off of it themselves. Not exactly an action that bears any relationship to free software concepts.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Not exactly. Once you say "no, we don't like it, we're not going to use it" it's not really "ripping off" a company to then market your idea somewhere else.
Erm... IBM and MS had a contract to produce OS/2. That contract included clauses about joint marketing, and I think even non-competition agreements. While OS/2 was under development, MS was also developing Windows NT. Not only that, but they were approaching applications developers, telling them that OS/2 was going to bomb, and if they really wanted to get the jump on things, they should be developing for Win NT. Of course, since MS was involved in both projects, the other developers had every reason to believe them. Then OS/2 failed in large part because there was no software for it, and there was for NT.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?