SQL Server Developers Face Huge Royalties

superpat writes "The Register reports that Microsoft licensed SQL Server technology from Timeline. Trouble is, they didn't license the tech for use by MS customers... After 3 1/2 years in the courts, the final judgement rules that MS SQL Server customers must pay Timeline patent royalties. The argument that Microsoft said it was OK is no defence, apparently." News.com.com.com has another story.

Comments

Whoo.

[bigfleet]

Time for Microsoft to step up to the plate. Why would you think that you had to read a EULA if they can get away with this kind of $hit?

Re:Whoo.

[CrudPuppy]

I'm not one of these extremists who will advocate free software for everything in the world, even if it doesnt fit a given situation, but this is a case in point for free software like MySQL et al.

Re:Whoo.

[afidel]

Hehe, funny thing is if it wouldn't raise the ire of antitrust lawyers is that the easiest and quickest solution would be for MS to buy this company. Why they didn't after incorperating their patented tech into their products and instead turned around and bought this companies biggest rival I have no clue on.

This is wrong...

[jlharris_50010]

Microsoft should be responisble... THEY infringined on the patent by selling it outside of the agreed scope!

Re:This is wrong...

[Skinny Rav]

Hmmm... how about customers suing MS on a basis that they were misinformed? I am not sure if EULA covers this - and if it does then it is a good opportunity to challenge it in court. If enough big customers have to pay huge enough royalties we may see some interesting things happening in near future

Raf

Re:This is wrong...

[barryfandango]

My employer owns SQL Server 2000 license and we develop applications around it. I can tell you that my boss has no idea who made the components of the software, any more than an average consumer cares that that their Dell computer has a Fujitsu CDRom and a Maxtor HD, or that the frame of their Toyota Matrix came from a Pontiac assembly line. Microsoft is selling an integrated product and I don't want to worry about where the various parts came from. I bought one box and agreed to one license - i've never heard of TimeLine and I've never seen their logo or copyright anywhere in the product. If Microsoft illegally include patented technologies in their product without informing me I just can't see logically how I could be liable. But then the law can be illogical sometimes. At the very least, I think a suit against Microsoft on behalf of its customers would have a great chance of success.

Re:This is wrong...

[Melantha_Bacchae]

TopShelf wrote:

> Timeline's point (which will surely be argued in court) is
> that Microsoft isn't qualified to make that promise in the
> first place, so the users can't get off the hook by saying
> "but Microsoft said...".

One of Timeline's statements in a press release said that, yes. The court argument over it took three and a half years and is now over.

Timeline also noted how Microsoft mislead its users, and they basically laid out the beginnings of a case users could put together (with a bit of research and a lawyer) and go after Microsoft to recoup the money they had to pay Timeline. That's kind of nice (to the users) of Timeline to do that, especially after Microsoft's deception kept them from getting paid for three and a half years.

> Probably the best part of that strategy for Timeline is that
> they can go after the various users, rather than try to
> gouge money out of Microsoft itself.

The users are the ones owing money, not Microsoft, thanks to Microsoft, their cheapskate ways and their lying. Timeline tried to offer Microsoft a package that would cover the users, but Microsoft would rather pay less, lie about the agreement, and pull a legal delay. Now its customers owe millions, and Microsoft walks away with some court charges (and a perjury offense to go with all those anti-trust offenses they are not having to be punished for).

> Microsoft could easily tie the case up in court for a
> decade or more, and make it apparent to Timeline that
> they'll never be able to make it worth the effort.

Microsoft didn't have to tie it up for more than three and a half years. Microsoft isn't the ones that owe the money, their users are. Read the article.

Oh, and everyone keep in mind, SQL Server is soon to be the file system called Yukon, and join Palladium and its amazing friends in Microsoft's next operating system. Does this mean anyone who writes software for that OS that accesses files will be liable for these royalties?

"Your way of thinking is completely different from mine!"
Mac user Shinoda to PC user Katagiri, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
(From the world's biggest switch commercial, starring Apple's biggest fan: Godzilla!)

Embrace, extend, destroy?

[JBMcB]

Someone needs to start a list of companies Microsoft has screwed over. It needs to be the first site that comes up when someone googles for "Microsoft Business Partner"

Let's see:
Citrix ("Yes, we're building virtual desktops into Windows now...")
Sendo ("Hey, nice phone tech, we'll just be taking it, then. Enjoy your chapter 11.")
Timeline, Inc. (New, from article)
VMWare ("Oh, and virtual system imaging is going in, too. Thanks Connectix!")

OSS Licencing

[ClarkEvans]

If these companies can sue Microsoft for distributing code which is burdened by patents; and if they win what does this do about OSS licenses? Does it matter if the developer knows a given peice of software violates a patent? We'd all stop making OSS software if we were liable for retroatively paying patent licensing fees for users to operate the software we contribute to.

In particular, the BSD license doesn't say anything about patents, should it have a clause like:

THIS SOFTWARE MAY BE COVERED BY PATENTS
AND THUS MAY NOT BE USEABLE WITHOUT
APPROPRIATE LICENSING BY THE OWNERS OF
THOSE PATENTS; THIS LICENSE IS NOT A
GRANT OF PATENT AND THE DEVELOPER
EXPLICITLY DENIES ANY RESPONSIBILITY
FOR PATENT LICENSING REQUIRED TO USE
THIS SOFTWARE.

Just wondering? How do other licenses handle it? Is there a clause in the GPL for this?

Re:OSS Licencing

[broken_bones]

Acording to Prof. Eben Moglen (general counsel for the Free Software Foundation) in this Slashdot interview:

"Free software should be freely modifiable and redistributable by its users. Of course, any code once modified may practice claims of a patent about which the modifying user is uninformed. So anyone distributing free software is unable to assure his users that each and every modification they may want to make is noninfringing. But when someone distributes apparently-free software under actual but undisclosed legal restrictions preventing modification or redistribution, the software is not really free. GPL tries to deal with this problem through section 7, which says that if code you are distributing is actually under restriction that is incompatible with the terms of the GPL, you can't distribute under GPL at all. So if you have accepted a patent license that prohibits you from reusing some of your code, or code you have received from others, in different contexts, GPL section 7 means that you cannot distribute under GPL. " (Emphasis and URL added)

Pray that Microsoft is *NOT* liable

[ClarkEvans]

Microsoft should be responsible...

I hope not. Beacuse if they are responsible for patent violations of their software by users then open source developers are going to be in for a world of hurt.

THEY infringed on the patent by selling it ouside of the agreed scope!

I'm sorry, but distributing code which violates a patent should definately not be infringing behavior; but IANAL. If it is, that is the nail in the OSS coffin. Now, if Microsoft explicltily claims that they will indemnify their users for patent violations... this is a different issue; but I very much doubt that Microsoft made any representations to this.

God help OSS developers if Microsoft is responsible. The PTO is who is responsible... for most likely (given their track record) allowing a bull-shit patent to go through.

And this is from a *confirmed* ANTI-MICROSOFT junkie, not one of your astro-turfers...

Re:Pray that Microsoft is *NOT* liable

[Rich0]

I believe that Linus had commented that he did not want to be made aware of any patents the linux kernel potentially infringed. The argument went that if the kernel was found to infringe there would be no liability for the developers if they were unaware of the original patent, and they would have to cease and desist distribution of the infringing code immediately. They would then work around the patent and relase new code which did not infringe. If they knowingly violated a patent they could be liable for damages even if they ceased and desisted immediately.

Developers are potentially liable for using or distributing patented code. Users are as well. Patents grant much stronger protection to intellectual property than copyrights do - but for a much shorter duration and they are (in theory) harder to obtain. However, submarine patents and the PTO's tendency to allow somebody to patent the practice of eating and breathing have caused all kinds of problems which shouldn't be there.

There should be a balance between intellectual property rights for innovators and giving those same innovators the ability to suck others into their claims unawares. I don't think the balance is correct now, but I don't advocate completely scrapping the whole concept of patents. Maybe in specific instances, such as software, it might make more sense - or maybe software should have a patent term of two years. The whole idea of patents is to give innovators a chance to make some money before cheap clones come in - in software you're probably done making your legitimate income within a year or two of product release, which isn't the case with a new lawnmower design.

Patent only for data warehouses

[MojoRilla]

If you read the memo on the timeline site, the patent only covers "automating the production of data warehouses/marts and the downstream delivery and enhancement of the information so obtained". Only a small amount of Microsoft customers probably use these features.

WRONG

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

If MySQL was using patented code, just because it was open source licensed to you doesn't make you a valid user of that patented code. This is a case in point for using software which contains 0 lines of patented code. While in most cases that happens to be free software rather than proprietary, patents can encumber free software projects as well (and have many times).

Re:WRONG

[Reziac]

Coding team of the future:

13 lawyers (8 of 'em specialists in patent and copyright law)
27 managers
63 marketing analysts
9 outsourcing contracts, paid in advance
1 programmer (optional)

(No, I *didn't* forget the testing and QA guys :)

Before people start pushing Postgres and MySQL

[zjbs14]

It appears that most of the patent issues center around the data mart capabilities in Analysis Services and its multidimensional query processing capabilities for SQL Server. Timeline doesn't have a problem if you're not using AS.

So, for most SQL Server users it's not an issue, and since neither Postgres or MySQL have multidimensional capabilities, they're not really an alternative either.

Spyglass

[esme]

You forgot Spyglass -- the company setup by UIUC to manage and commercialize the Mosaic source code. When they negotiated with Microsoft, they thought they had done a really good job. They got a fixed percentage of the gross.

And then MS gave it away for free, screwing not only Spyglass, but Spyglass's only other customer -- Netscape.

-Esme