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Sendo vs. Microsoft: The Truth Comes Out
igotmybfg writes "The Register has a story which includes many details about the phone maker's Texas suit against the software giant. It seems that Microsoft had much more to gain from letting its partner fail than helping it to succeed: in the event of a bankruptcy, Microsoft acquired all of Sendo's intellectual property related to the z100 Stinger SmartPhone, and was then free to do whatever it wanted, which in this case turned out to be going behind Sendo's back and making a deal with Orange SPA." Read our original article about this to get more background information.
I'm astounded. I truly can't believe a household name such as Microsoft would be involved in underhand business practises.
Seriously, the law makers in the US should probably look into Microsoft being a monopoly....don't they have these things called antitrust laws too?
And Bill Gates looks like such a nice guy. How can he be evil when he wants to save children in third world countries from AIDS?
When you walk into the lion's den, you need more than a g-string on. To have put themselves in a position where M$ could grab Sendo's intellectual property by not giving them anything is stupid.
That said, dealing in bad faith is something that is tortous. I hope Sendo recovers the stars the moon and the sky from these bastards.
Only summer comes, and the code isn't ready. It isn't ready in the autumn, either, and this starts to play hell with Sendo's budgets. December rolls round, and according to Sendo, bugfixes that carriers have requested are being refused by Microsoft. Sendo is in a cash crisis, and a call to VCs is spurned. So Sendo asks Microsoft for a further cash injection, which is declined:
"Microsoft refused with the full knowledge that this refusal would push Sendo to insolvency", claims Sendo in the filing.
This sounds an awful like the Mafia. Take over a business. Milk the shit out of it. Keep saying you will take care of it. Burn the damn place down when it fails (as if you cared in the first place).
Watching the free market in action is like watching a lion rip apart a gazelle on animal planet.
woohoo!
"Sendo got what they deserved - for neglecting the reality of harsh businesses practices."
Not at all, business relationships - like all relationships - must have a basis of trust to succeed. Sendo obviously made the mistake of thinking that Microsoft was run by humans.
That was classic intercourse!
In MS's defense, there is no (nor should there be any) law against getting into really sweetheart deals at the expense of the other party. If I see an antique on eBay selling for $5 that I know to be incredibly valuable, I should buy it -- I'm under no imaginable obligation to contact the seller and let him know he's an idiot.
And so it appears in this case: whoever was making decisions at Sendo really, really screwed up. They gave MS the power to destroy them, then gave them huge incentive to do so.
That's life.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I mean, if I would have THIS clause in the contract, it is NORMAL to assume that MS would play hardball to then gain all the rights. This is to be expected. Unless they crossed some lines then (which to proove will be the problem of Sendo), Sendo got what they deserved - for neglecting the reality of harsh businesses practices.
This part doesn't suprise me much, having read up on the history of Microsoft's dealings with its 'partners' over the years.
What gets me is that this sequence of events started back in 2001, at the time that Judge Jackson was throwing the book at Microsoft for, amongst other misdemeanours, doing the very same thing they were evidently planning on doing to Sendo!
Even if Sendo's case falls flat, it will have served to make Microsoft's circle of friends even smaller. What more proof could you ask for to show that the people in charge of Microsoft have not learned to play fair?
-MT.
1. Profit. 2. Profit???? 3. Profit.
if Sendo engineers can actually integrate onto a Series 60 platform.
Just because the OS can't do what you need, then just bypass it. A classic example of this is SIM Locking to a particular network, or group of networks. The SDK (Pocket PC 2002 and Smartphone) doesn't support this. Sendo complain, HTC, MiTac, Samsung, and Compal work around it (to varying degrees of success).
Don't believe this nonsense. For example Microsoft would NEVER, screw over Miguel de Icaza and the MONO effort. Trust them. If Microsoft says they support the MONO effort, we can take them at their word. They are people of high integrity and whatever they say, they mean. They would never lead others along the garden path, with every intention of crushing them later on.
+5 Sarcasm.
With all these civil cases going on, could they shape MS's behavior more than the antitrust trial?
.... but then I think about their huge pile of money, and the idea seems laughable.
I could see a future where microsoft is afraid to do the "bad things" they like to do for fear of lawsuits
And what ever happened to the EU antitrust type trial?
I guess this is a more-or-less standard part of any (exclusive) contract: if one partner fails, the other gets the freedom to make new deals with new partners.
Stupid? No, hardly. The alternative would be that M$ could not sell *any* phones if and when Sendo fails.
Of course, Sendo should have insisted on a "M$ will not run us into the ground" clause. But really, trust *is* a major part of business.
You can try to twist this in any pro-microsoft way you like, but the plain fact is that they have again been very, very bad.
And we are not talking about some presumed badness that may or may not happen in the far future. We are talking about well-documented badness that happened just now.
Running your business partners into the ground and stealing their trade secrets is NOT normal business practice.
If you are a company with any intellectual holdings or patents, dont ever work with Microsoft. If you only manufacture things and dont know anything about what you do then its fine.
Its nearly written in stone since before. Microsoft is a midas touch to any company with any form of knowledge that works together with them. Sendo should have realized this ofcourse. Still that doesnt in any way defends what Microsoft did wich clearly fradulent behaviour and underhanded business practises. If every company behaived like Microsoft all resources would go to fighting instead of developing good products. This kind of mafia methods needs to stop now!
In my book thats bad for me and other consumers.
HTTP/1.1 400
OK. Biggest computer company.
Who have no phone market share. Show me they have a winning strategy in that marketplace and I'll believe you have a point in this instance.
You may be right about desktop apps but this is just not the same.
Similarly games companies, if looking to tie themselves to a console maker, would do better to tie themselves to Sony than MS.
From the article:
... I would say we're lucky this technology wasn't determined by American companies (and I basically don't care if they are European or Asean), or else we'd pay double for our phones, just for the patents to use the proprietary communication format.
To Americans, the telecom world's model of promoting growth through vertical investments (a Nokia or an Ericsson bails out the carriers) and through IP sharing (yeuch!), and promoting common standards (that's goddam Communism!), must look like a filthy and incestuous business.
Perhaps slightly unrelated (yes, mod me down), but I wonder if the cell phone market would ever have been that successful as it is now without these common standards, especially if you think that the mobile market/penetration is the largest in Scandinavia. Imagine a world where a Nokia phone could not communicate with a Sony/Ericsson, what a waste of resources would that be,
But hey, isn't that exactly what we have on the desktop?
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
1. Sendo sues MS.
2. MS fights for a little while.
3. Sendo gets more desperate, and settles with MS for enough money to appease their investors.
Case closed.
$8.95/mo web hosting
The easier way is that MS just says "Sorry folks, we have a patent on XXXX, and you can't use MONO any more. Oh by the way, since it is now so ingrained into Gnome, you can't use it either. Oh, and since all those Linux disks have Gnome on them, you'll have to destroy them all too."
Seemed to be a smart choice after all..
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I don't know how much truth lies in this, but when any organization becomes big enough, culture plays a big role in dictating what is allowed and what's not.
Uhh.. Score 5? Someone's got an odd concept of Capitalism.
Capitalism works fine when everyone's honourable, and keeps their word, and basically plays the game. People make products and make money. Best product wins (votes=money).
MS, as usual, are breaking the rules, and pulling their own game (kill all other contenders), which isn't Capitalism.
In Capitalism, you end up with a flourishing ecosystem of companies providing a variety of competing products. Evolution selects the best.
In the MS game, you end up with one monolithic power providing what it thinks is best for people.
In fact, MS' way is more like communism than capitalism.
"To each unto their needs'..
MS decides what each person needs, and that's what they get, like it or not. It attempts to take all competition out of the arena, so, if you want an office suite, you have MS office, as MS has killed the competition.
So, really, MS is anti-capitalist.
Malk
Over the Week-end this was plastered all over the UK's Broadsheets (quality) news papers in the last few day; and not technology sections but in the Business. The damage to Microsoft's reputation for bad-faith with the 'Captains of Industry' from this episode will be profound.
There is also refuge for Sendo in UK bankruptcy laws, where Creditors have an incredible amount of power in the say of the winding up of a company. There are two forms, Administration, a private sector accountant is appointed to take over running of the business. He has absolute authority in to persue the Creditors best interests, even if the only real assets are IP, bad debts and damages. In this fails the next step is Insolvency, Government investigators from the DTI investigate why the business failed, have criminal investigative powers and can sequestrate assets of bad debtors, and prosecute offenders. If Sendo do go bust that is only the start of Microsoft problems.
IIRC Microsoft has a stake in General Magic, which developed video software for handheld devices. It was of note, a few years ago, because General Magic was down to $1 a share when Microsoft took interest. Last I looked General Magic closed September or early October and was winding down completely about December. Guess who will get their IP, as a significant debtor
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
1. Sendo sues MS.
2. MS stalls for a long, long time. Judge is too wimpy to issue an injunction.
3. Microsoft refuses to settle. Sendo goes bankrupt from the legal fees.
4. The Sendo's Creditors including the Accountants and Lawyers gain Sendo assets including the right to sue Microsoft.
5. (Even more) profit for Accountants and Lawyers
6. Microsoft now have no choice but to settle in order to cap the legal fees.
OTOH, his sense of smell more than compensate for this deficiency - he can smell a dollar bill from a distance of 12 miles, even if the bill is downwind, underwater and he has a severe cold. This has been confirmed in secret tests in the Microsoft labs in Redmond.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Do not partner with Microsoft. Do not become inolved with a company that has a long, pathetic history of screwing-over anyone and everyone they even remotely deal with.
Learn, people! If you play with fire, you'll get burned! Instead, choose to deal with organizations that are friendly because they understand the concept of doing good work to stay in business (open source vendors for example).
Why bother.
Anyone familiar with the term "critical path"? That is the path in the development cycle that affects all others, and ultimately the deliverablilty of the product. If you delay the critical path, you delay the product.
If you are planning a product that will determine the success of your company, you should make sure that critical path is kept in-house where it can be controlled. Sendo's management obviously didn't get this. (A better buisiness decision might have been to use an open source operating system and hire a bunch of developers to customize it for you.)
This is why many smaller broadband companies went belly up in the ".com roaring 90's". They depended on someone else (telcos and cable companies) to deliver on their critical path. That's just plain stupid.
-ted
> In the Anglo Saxon legal system, a contract has equal status as the law...
Not quite. Clauses that require breaking the law are themselves illegal and can't be enforced.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I mean, really. Anyone considering a deal with MS that involves the transfer, licensing, ownership of IP to Microsoft should click their heels together three times and say:
"Spyglass, Spyglass, Spyglass."
It's not like MS hasn't been caught redhanded pulling this sort of crap before.
KFG
I keep hearing on /. about this thing called a Constitution which guarantees one to be innocent until proven guilty. I guess that only applies selectively according to the whims of geeks? Rights exist to protect ALL whether you agree with or even like others. I guess all the whining is really the releasing of a bunch of hot air from people with no life.
/. doesn't like Microsoft, ANY lawsuit, regardless of merits, is a good thing. Until the judge rules, neither side is guilty, PERIOD.
What did you expect IN THE FILING FROM SENDO?!?!?! "Microsoft treated us with the utmost respect, w screwed up and lost a bunch of money but we're going to use anti-Microsoft sentiment to push this case along and get a crack at the 40+ billion dollars they have sitting around just itching to be plundered by a bunch of lawyers."
The filing is Sendo's side of the case but since it's a lawsuit against Microsoft and
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
I totally agree. I hate it when a news source shows where its bias is. Bias should be subtle so you get the illusion that you're just getting facts, making it easier to deceive myself that I'm getting objective news instead of slanted news. Have the bias hanging out, it's like a news organization's private parts hanging out. Won't someone think of the children!
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go review the carefully researched, reasoned, and unbiased discussion on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I guess finally history is catching up to MS.
Everyone thought the antitrust trial was where MS was going to meet up with its karma, too. Look where that got us -- a watered-down sweetheart "settlement" which does nothing to address the real problems with MS, let alone the issues presented at the antitrust trial.
If this case turns into a serious legal threat, I wonder how many bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hdonations and contributions MS will have to make in order to get another toothless "settlement".
Jay (=
But, anyone who actually believes Microsoft actually wants to be their "partner" in bringing "new products" to "market" is a blithering IDIOT. Microsoft isn't interested in being anyone's partner. M$ has enough money to go out and start its own mobile phone company. It's just cheaper and easier to spend $12M to steal the research and IP.
These little startups, in their eagerness to play "big company" to impress their fourbucks-going friends, will ink any deal that brings in money, because that's all they see. They don't think ahead, and don't have any idea whom their friends and enemies are. Microsoft was probably interting and rotating the knife in their backs before the ink was even dry...
sure it pays,
Now I don't know what your definition is of not working is, but if cash/assets are any measure of success i think the said "fraudsters" have done pretty well out of it don't you think ?, going to prison for 7 - 15years to come out a multi-millionaire from your embezzeled cash is hardly a failure.
Microsoft has shown no interest whatsoever in having subtlety, or being trustworthy. In fact, they have filed amicus briefs supporting Nike in Nike's legal attempt to establish that corporations have the same rights to lie outright in public statements that a human being would have, so Microsoft is officially in favor of having their word be worthless.
Any living Mafia don would tell you this was very foolish. If you expect EVER to deal with others who have power, you have to have them treating you as a person or entity with a position and coherent issues and concerns, rather than have them treat you as an essentially unpredictable object or inconvenient fact. When they no longer have reason to consider your stated wishes, you're in trouble even if you have power, because you've lost the ability to direct others through persuasion. All you have is brute force- and the 'uptime' of brute force is not 100%, ever.