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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."
I don't think so. Have you seen the invocation of some embedded applets in IE? Nothing like Netscape.
I have my feelings against Microsoft, but this smells like being in the right place at the right time, and PTO's own trademarked brand of ignorance.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Like someone else said, that's more than the Justice Department was able to do in 5 years.
Just look at the political careers of all the *major* politicians that were invloved in the original MS anti-trust case. If they didn't politically stagnate then MS made them go away - quietly, and expensively.
Monopolies can not be brought down with small lawsuits anymore. It will take a vast reversal in public opinion, many brave and ambitious politicians, and some fierce competition. So far we have 1 out of 3.
This is the best news that I've heard for a while.
Why, you ask?
Because, my friends, Microsoft is now going to spends billions to kill the current patent system. They're going to buy every Congressman from Alaska to Puerto Rico to shut this scam down. Bill Gates is going to spend so much on politicians that they'll still be standing in line to give him blow jobs twenty years from now. After Microsoft is finished, the only debate will be whether to use the patent authority building for Total Information Awareness Headquarters or turn it into a Fritz Chip manufacturing plant.
Right, but it would affect the mozilla foundation as well. Much as I hate Microsoft these days, this kind of broad patent is just stupid. This is also consecutive loss number two for microsoft this year. The first being the extremely broad data storage patent that applied to SQL server. Considering that Microsoft is one of the richest companies in the world, you would think they would have better legal defense. It almost seems like they can't win these days. I can't wait to see how the Xbox and Trusted Computing patent infringement case goes.
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Did anyone else notice that Eolas did all this work in Mosaic, yet they're not listed on any licensee list for Spyglass or NCSA?
Sounds like they were doing commercial work without a commerical licensee to the code. The code to NCSA was freely distributable, but to do commercial work with it, it had to be licensed.
What is interesting to me is that MS already settled with AOL for over 700 million for what they did to netscape. If this verdict stands (and god knows MS can drag it out forever and has friends in very high places) it will have cost MS over a billion dollars to gain dominance over the web.
I wonder if they feel like it was worth it. Billion is pocket change to MS but still it would have been cheaper to just license the patent.
War is necrophilia.
"We believe the evidence will ultimately show that there was no infringement of any kind, and that the accused feature in our browser technology was developed by our own engineers based on preexisting Microsoft technology."
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but I think they have plenty of room to wiggle out of this one on appeal.
Microsoft's ActiveX plug-in technology, or whatever it's called today, is pretty much a direct descendent of OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) which allowed applications to be embedded within Word, Excel and any other GUI application that cared to implement the correct APIs. I'm fairly certain OLE and the enabling COM technology predates 1993 in some form or another. Embedding mini-applications within the context of a web browser hypertext document seems a pretty straightforward and obvious extension of embedding mini-applications within the context of other GUI based applications such as Word and Excel.
Within the actual patent there seem to be descriptions about the embedded application within the browser viewing data created by a remote server with computational power exceeding what is available to the browser or media terminal. Perhaps this is what differentiates browser plug-ins from standard application plug-ins, but even this seems like a direct and obvious extension of thin-client/server computing reaching back to the days of X Window terminals or before.
What amazes me are the legal hacks that Microsoft must have hired to royally botch this case. I can only imagine they were arrogant SOBs the jury couldn't wait to stick-it to when it came time for deliberation.
Patents or just software patents?
Software patents are bad because their lifetime is an eternity in the software world, giving them undue monopolistic power. This is exacerbated by the fact that most of the patent examiners don't seem to have the direct knowledge or the familiarity with computing history to differentiate between trivial ideas and really unique, innovative stuff.
(And then there's also the problem of idiots flooding the patent office with ridiculous patents.)
However, the patent system as originally envisioned by the U.S. forefathers was a pretty good idea. It gives inventors an incentive to fully disclose the workings of their inventions to the public in exchange for a limited-time monopoly.
- Making $1 is good.
- Making more is better.
- Losing $1 or more is bad.
Period.I'm not trying to shift discussion away from whether Microsoft's actions were ethical, whether patents are good, or any really relevant and interesting discussions.
However, everything else we discuss here is, at best, philosophy to a creature like Microsoft. When you are talking about $billions in revenue, and if you are trying to "get into Microsoft's head", you need to shift perspective a bit. I, personally, think patents have been abused in many ways in the last decade. However, a company like Microsoft only evaluates things like this on one basis - money. Think like that, and you'll practically be in Bill's head.
Also, other makers of browsers and plug-ins may find themselves involved in litigation with Eolas very soon!
This is exactly what I'm afraid of. If Microsoft's fortunes in this matter don't change it may be a little embarassing and a bit painful to pay damages and license fees to Eolas, but it will surely be fatal to any other unfortunate victim caught in this sinister patent trap.
Also, if Microsoft does ultimately lose the appeal, one can be certain Microsoft will do everything in their power to be sure the heads of other infringers are served on a silver platter to Eolas with garnish on the side.
What's really sad is by losing the infringement case, Microsoft still wins big time. All other current and future browser competitors would be instantly eliminated as viable alternatives. Furthermore, the vast majority of the public wouldn't even notice or care thanks to the Microsoft monopoly on browsers.
Their quarterly PROFIT is around $1.5 billion. They just lost 1/3rd of their quarterly profit in one fell swoop. Think that might affect them coming in below estimates this quarter??
A cross licensing deal is often much cheaper than going to court to try to invalidate a patent, so I wouldn't be surprised if that is often tried before deciding to invalidate a patent. Of course, I'm not a lawyer, but these people are and they advise more or less the same if it's a viable option in the light of the litigated company's strategy (i.e., if they're mainly interested in being able to continue their business).
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I disagree. The usual way to respond to a patent suit is to contersue. Its more like nuclear wargaming than law (and indeed an all out software patent war in the USA would do the same to the economy as a nuclear war)
The current way to avoid patent lawsuits is to patent in the USA (so you can sue people) but make nothing (so you can sue ibm and they cant nuke you), then sell rights to a "random" chinese or similar company to make them on a royalty and have a third "unrelated" grey import company ship zillions of them into the USA. If anything nasty occurs (patent lawsuit, class action, even safety) then the grey importer folds and everyone else gets to keep all the money.
Great for everyone who is rich and doesn't care about unemployment in the western world, or especially in the USA about health and safety issues given the lack of state/national health care.
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.
What if the system was changed so that once you have filed a patent and it is accepted by the U.S. patent office, you get a year (or some specific time period) to implement the patented concept in a product, or the patent expires? Would that not sufficiently defend the industry against patent portfolio sharks?
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