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Microsoft Nailed by Software Patent
An anonymous reader writes "It was just announced that Microsoft lost the case where it was accused of violating Eolas' patent on embedded applications in the Internet Explorer browser. They have been fined $521 million in damages."
Unfortunately that much money's a drop in the bucket for microsoft
Actually, half a billion isn't a "drop in the bucket" even for M$. M$ has quarterly revenues of roughly US$12 Billion.
That's 4 percent of their quarterly revenue which is not an insignificant number for the corporate accounting types.
But then again, M$ does have ~US$48 Billion in cash reserves. So I guess it is just a drop.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Ummmmmm. No. Microsoft has lost a numeber of similiar suits. In the end it hasn't made any difference. Remember Stac and their disk compression software? Seems like someone called Spyglass also won a lawsuit alleging M$ infringement on their web tech. And of course there is always the DR Dos / Novell / Caldera suit that was settled last year. Microsoft loses all the time, but with multiple monopolies they can afford to lose from time to time. Half a billion. That's what, .5% of their current cash reserves (after they just paid out 10 Billion to stockholders)?
kevin zollinger - kevin@mailsoap.com Spam Free Email!
Some karma whoring links others might find interesting.
EOLAS SUES MICROSOFT FOR INFRINGEMENT OF PATENT...
The patent
I.O.U One Sig.
Link to the actual patent.
I'm not much at reading patents but this looks like the usual silly IT patent that could apply to just about anything. Can't see this as a good thing at all.
"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
Although this news is great, there is still quite a fight ahead. An appellate judge will decide in the upcoming weeks if the appeal has merrit. If so, it could drag on for years. In that case, Microsoft will likely settle for much less. The one thing I noticed about the trial that might give MS grounds for appeal is the trial judge instructed the jury not to weigh testimony from Pei Wei, a fellow who claims to have prior art. If the judge handled that innapropriately, MS could have grounds for appeal.
It could go either way for MS, though and they may get spanked harder than you think. This is only one of several cases. Eolas is also filing separate suits against MS for Windows sales between 2001 and present day and sales before the scope of the current trial. Also, other makers of browsers and plug-ins may find themselves involved in litigation with Eolas very soon!
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Also, from the article:
Isn't that irrelevant, and why software patents are 'evil'? It doesn't matter whether your work was completely independent. If it is patented, your stuffed.
Having said that though, check out the case Frearson v Loe, dated 1878 (google is your friend). I gather (in my naive IANAL way) that it is an often quoted precedent. The case determined that non-commercial experimentation is okay, even in the face of patents. Can writing free software be considered to be an experiment?
Eolas is not a patent profolio company by a long shot, they are a pure R&D company.
You can see some of the things thay have patented here.
I seem to recall a article where the founder of Eolas was talking about a patent war against Microsoft, not because they wanted royalties but because they objected to the I.E.ization of the web.
Notice that Eolas is going after Microsoft, not Sun or Mozilla.
Standard practice for patent profolio companies is to prey on the weaker first. Eolas went after the main standard breaker with their lawsuit. I think this should give us some hope about Eolas's intentions.
My objection to most software patents stands. If you're doing something that an expert would consider to be an obvious extension to the current state of the art, you don't have something patentable.
There is an interesting paragraph in the cnet article about this case, pasted below: Additionally, the judge in the district court case will hear evidence in the coming weeks on a counterclaim from Microsoft. The software giant said that Eolas' patents are invalid and that an inventor name Pei Wei, who worked at O'Reilly and Associates, came up with similar technology, but at an earlier time. A Microsoft representative said that Eolas knew of his work, which makes their lawsuit inequitable. A quick google groups search shows a number of interesting posts involving Pei Wei.. such as http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Pei+Wei&hl=en&lr =&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=r&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12 &as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=11&as_maxm=8&as_ma xy=1994&selm=93020.102722RBNTJC%40rohvm1.rohmhaas. com&rnum=5
This article at nytimes.com mentions that microsoft tried to argue that there was prior art, but the judge ruled the jury could not consider it in determining if microsoft violated the patent...
how rediculous.
I didn't mention this earlier because I didn't want Eolas to win, but I guess there is no harm in mentioning it now.
During the litigation, lawyers from Microsoft contacted me about a program that I wrote in 1992 called tkwww which was an early web browser. The important thing about tkwww was that it rendered images by calling an external application xli.
This was sufficiently close to what microsoft was looking for that a lawyer (who was named Vlad of all things) talked to me about what I did. I stupidly gave him a pointer to a URL through which they downloaded everything, and even more stupidly did not bill them anything at the time.
When I finally came around to sending them an invoice I got some stupid excuse about them might needing me as a witness so that they couldn't pay me anything. I never heard from them again.
The reason I didn't mention this earlier was because I thought that the Eolas patent was silly and I didn't want to say anything that would help them. Now that they won the case against Microsoft, I'd like to let everyone know about this prior art, in case Eolas decided to go against other people.
The truly important question is whether or not the company actually produces anything. If they do, then they're vulnerable to a countersuit involving patent infringement.
"IP" holding companies are some of the most dangerous creatures in the technological world today. The reason is simple: the traditional way the patent game is played is that most companies would collect patents for use as a defense against patent infringement suits. When the inevitable suit happened, they'd break out their own patent portfolio and, hopefully, find at least one that the company suing them was infringing. Both companies would agree to cross-license their patents and life is good again.
Companies that don't have a patent portfolio are at a disadvantage in that game, of course, but the upside is that patent infringement suits were relatively rare, so one could do development work in relative peace. Only if you were wildly successful as a result would you face an infringement suit, and at that point you'd generally have the ability to pay for a licensing arrangement -- unless the initiator of the suit was a competitor (as was the case in, e.g., Amazon vs. B&N). The overall system wasn't perfect, of course, but it worked well enough. Certainly free software was reasonably safe from such suits because there would be no money to be had from such a suit.
Enter the "IP" holding company. The problem with such a company is that there is no defense against them. The traditional method of cross-licensing doesn't work because such a company doesn't infringe on any patents. It can't, because the company itself doesn't actually make anything. As often (probably more, actually) as not, these "IP" holding companies don't even invent anything. Their sole purpose in life is to suck money out of companies that do invent and build things. That can include any company that does a lot of free software work, like IBM and RedHat.
I think these "IP" companies are among the greatest dangers our technology-driven world faces today, because there is no effective remedy against them, short of legislation. And we all know how likely it is that that will be of overall benefit.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
The actual patent text is at uspto.gov.
It seems that IE is not the only browser that would be susceptible to a lawsuit.
From the abstract: ...(allowing a browser) to access and execute an embedded program object
the defence laches is slightly more difficult to use than this. You need to show:
that the patent holder's delay was unreasonable and inexcusable (there is a presumption that 6 years is a sufficient delay for this purpose); and
The alleged infringer suffered materially prejudicial harm from the delay. For example, if the delay has meant that the claimed damages are significantly increased, then the doctrine of laches may prevent the plaintiff recovering that increase.
Bzzt, wrong. It's trademarks you lose if you don't enforce them. Patents can be enforced as selectively as you care, likewise with copyright.
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Bill may be selling, but he hasn't sold 75% of his stock.