Slashdot Mirror
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 $521 million in damages."
A little patent-portfolio company did in one suit what the Fed couldn't in 5 years.
Don't almost all browsers use plug-ins? This could be bad for Mozilla as well.
This means there will probably just be another IE service pack that breaks more web pages....
I don't think so. Have you seen the invocation of some embedded applets in IE? Nothing like Netscape.
I have my feelings against Microsoft, but this smells like being in the right place at the right time, and PTO's own trademarked brand of ignorance.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Microsoft = bad
Patents = bad
So is this good? Must be some sort of paradox if so...
"Isn't this just one more reason to use MozillaFirebird?"
If I were looking to up my karma, then yes.
Like someone else said, that's more than the Justice Department was able to do in 5 years.
Patents on the simple idea of plug-ins and applets? This seems almost as ridiculous as the amazon patent on one click purchasing.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
I dislike Microsoft but I still don't see that this helps the development community or users at all. Software patents are stupid and a bad idea.. even when being used against that monopoly we love to hate. Anyone with an interest in the freedom of developers to develop what they want and the freedom of users to choose the best product for their needs can't see this as anything but a loss.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
From the article: "Eolas had argued that the technology for "plug-ins" and "applets" made it possible for Microsoft to compete against the Netscape Navigator browser."
In other news, SCO has also sued Mozilla for the use of "HTML" and "JavaScript" which have made it possible to be used by more than one person...
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
Unfortunately that much money's a drop in the bucket for microsoft
Actually, half a billion isn't a "drop in the bucket" even for M$. 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.
You may have noticed that this article seemingly falls into 7 different categories. Let me break them down for you so you can see for yourself how each one applies to this insightful article.
Firstly, the Bill-Gates-As-Cyborg is representative of Microsoft being fucked.
Secondly, the IE icon with the broken halo is representative of Microsoft falling from grace.
Thirdly, the circuitboard was just misclick by Taco.
Fourthly, the patent pending icon is representative of Cyborg-Bill being stabbed in the back by a rusty spoon.
Fifthly, the hat on briefcase thing also represents Microsoft being fucked.
Sixthly, the internet thing represents my posting this on slashdot about Microsoft being fucked.
Lastly, the newspaper icon represents joe sixpack reading in weekly world news tomorrow that Microsoft is being fucked.
Boo: Overbroad Patents!
Boo: This patent is stupid!
Boo: Microsoft in general!
Yay: Microsoft has to pay money!
Boo: It's too little money!
Solution to this:
Yay: Mozilla!
Yay: Slashdot!
Before you start bitching about Slashdot user's being hypocrites, keep in mind that Slashdot is a community filled with 1000's of a users who all have very different opinions on everything.
I do not support this ruling, because I do not support patents in any way shape or form. That does not mean the Slashdot community as a whole feels the same.
In fact, it's very hard to determine just what it is the Slashdot community DOES believe, because more often than not it's the negativity that makes it through the ranking system more than anything else.
Some people will call this a great victory for Open Source. I don't. I think it's a travesty, but that's my opinion and mine alone. Other's may or may not agree, but please don't let one person's opinion spoil your view of the entire community.
Bryan
In order to "capture and protect" innovation, companies register more and more patents each year, often just to prevent others from suing them. But some companies register patents for the sole purpose of engaging in legal warfare -- a risky gamble with potentially huge prizes.
The biggest danger inherent in software patents is to free software. Megacorporations can easily collect thousands of patents on trivial processes to use against open source programmers who have little means to defend themselves. Wait for Microsoft and others to attack on this front -- that would be nice extra FUD fodder with all the SCO crap going on right now. To ignore software patents as Linus Torvalds does is the wrong approach. They must be eliminated entirely.
- They were embedded in the "hypermedia" document
- They could communicate with the browser
- They could communicate with the server (at least by using sockets and datagrams)
- By doing this they were "providing the user of the client computer with interactive features and allowing the user to have access to greater computing power than may be available at the user's client computer."
Sorry, but I think MS should be in the clear here.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
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.
Your post is completely and utterly worthless. Mine is of similar caliber.
Umm... the patent was filed in 1994 before Mosaic or event Netscape had plugins?
I'm assuming this is a troll, but I'll bite anyway - layoffs occur when structural changes are made to a business. Nobody sees a tangible difference in how Microsoft would do business as a result of this. They'll probably just tie this up in appeals for the next several years anyway, ensuring happy employment for lots of hard-working, blue collar lawyer types...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
IBM, Microsoft, Apple all have giant patent portfolios. When a small company like Eolas can nail microsoft for a patent violation it does not bode well for linux. If IBM can b*tch slap SCO with patent violations regarding hierarchial graphical menus. What is to stop them or any other patent hoarder from making the same claim against linux? Currently, these companies refrain from suing each other because they know the other company likely has patents they are violating...But what ace in the hole patents does linux have up its sleeve?
mitomac
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?
Microsoft is a nice target for lawsuits: they're big, visible and have lots of money. However, what if an open source browser had a more significant market share? Wouldn't that same patent-portfolio group come demanding royalties?
This is a more general concern that scares me; it may be tested by the SCO-IBM case(s). Say a company patents some software technology. What if the developers working on that code go home at night and use the same concepts in some open source projects? I emphasize concepts because the developers are smart enough not to copy code, but a patent covers an idea, not a specific implementation.
A lot of this paranoia comes from my co-worker, who is pro-Microsoft and very much anti-open source. He is absolutely convinced that open source is communism, and that it clashes with capitalism. He loves to suggest the above scenario and predict that the GPL will ultimately fail in court...
Finally, back to Microsoft: don't they have over $40 billion in cash? So $500 million is 1/80th of $40 billion. That's like having $400 and being fined $5. Oh, that hurts. Is anyone here an accountant? How much of that gets written off in taxes? It's really a joke, in my mind.
Of course I don't know the details of the case, but $500 million seems weak. Microsoft has said that IE is now a critical part of Windows. Windows and Office are the only two sources of revenue for Microsoft... doesn't that somehow make IE a critical part of their income stream? And they only got fined five bucks for it?
I've been following the Eolas lawsuit for a long time now, and this is bad folks.
They basically have a patent on any embedded technology in a browser. A lot of people have looked into this, and so far have come up with nothing. The earliest "application" in a browser technology I'm aware of is Vosaic, but I can't get ahold of anything that shows what date that was originally set up.
This screws Flash, Java applets, and all kinds of other things. Watch for more lawsuits in the future.
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.
More accurately, microsoft is a subset of evil, and patents is a subset of evil. The most that can be said is "Because some evil is microsoft, and some evil is patents, some microsoft may be patents."
In this article.
One interesting thing not mentioned in the Rueter's report but expounded upon in detail in the pre-decision Cringely article is that winning this lawsuit may allow Eolas to prevent Microsoft fom any infringing behavior through a court injunction -- ie. they can't use the technology covered under the patent upheld by the court at any price if Eolas decides to do that (since by holding the patent they are not required to license the right to use it to anyone). And they may decide to sell to someone other than Microsoft exclusively the rights to develop software including the patented methods.
This is one of the places software patents are really bad (though in Microsoft's case its a bit of being hoist by their own petard), the exclusivity without compulsory licensing allows Eolas (or any other company with a patented process/method/device) to use their patent as a club to force Microsoft (or anyone else) to do whatever Eolas wants if they need/want to license the patented technology.
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
I don't care if its Microsoft, SCO, or Linus "Himself" - software patents are bad. Micro Soft is wrong in a great many things... but they should not have to defend themselves against "(obvious idea) over the internet" patents or any other silly patents. No one should.
..., you can find so many other things to hate them for?"
like Dennis Miller said, "Why hate someone (for something irrelevant) when, if you take the time to get to know them
be upset and angry at Microsoft for the things they do, not for those things that are not fair.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
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.
That being the case, and given the fact that they lost this lawsuit, there are a number of things that could happen:
The interesting question is: which of the above would represent the best thing for the free software community, and how likely is it to happen?
Things obviously don't get any better initially if they cave, though the long-term consequences might be of benefit (if they cave and just pay, then other patent-holding companies will be very much encouraged by that and we'll probably end up seeing many more such suits by such companies, and eventually the big corps will Do Something about the problem, though I suspect the end result will benefit only them and not us).
If Microsoft appeals to the Supreme Court, they can only do so if they have some sort of Constitutional argument. That's not as far-fetched as it sounds, because they can very legitimately question whether or not the patent in question and others like it meets the intent of the clause in the Constitution upon which patent law itself is based. If it weren't for the fact that Microsoft hates to lose and generally tries to win at all costs, I would totally dismiss this as a possibility.
If Microsoft pushes for some sort of legislation, the natural question is what that legislation would look like. My cynical outlook forces me to think that the resulting legislation would somehow raise the barrier of entry for either acquiring a patent or prosecuting a patent so high that only megacorps like Microsoft would be able to participate. Problem solved, along with the problems of these pesky little IP companies and free software types.
Finally, Microsoft could buy the company in question out, but that might be the same thing as IBM buying SCO out as far as end results go, with the end result being that every little upstart IP company will be suing the likes of Microsoft in order to get bought out. If Microsoft has a big enough patent portfolio, then they really don't need to do this and thus probably won't.
I'll bet Eolas is going to get lots of visits from the BSA from now on...
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
No, they'll just pay to help put caps on jury-awards. That way they can still use the patent laws to bankrupt/stifle small companies/open source advocates who might be competition, but not worry about being put out of business because they ran roughshod over someone else's patent.
After thinking a bit, this has to be bad. Microsoft is being sued for infringing on a trivial patent that shoud never have been granted in the first place.
Of course Microsoft fully deserves to go down for their illegal actions over the last two decades, but I think they need to go down for the right reasons.
Not because some schmuck wants to collect royalties he doesn't deserve.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Microsoft getting fined this way doesn't turn my crank at all. Also, I'm beginning to wonder why they allow jury trials for issues that are as technically complexe as this, nevermind allowing patents on processes and software in the first place...
This is as stupid a patent as they come: what's a plugin or an applet? Fundamentally it is all in the same family of idea as of linked libraries-- bloody fundamental to every piece of software out there -- except that in this case the software is dynamically downloaded by a browser and then executed within the security context of the browser.
521 million? I'm all for roasting Microsoft when they deserve it, but this is nothing they should have to pay for. Next thing you know Mozilla will get into trouble for having downloadable theme plugins.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
"Microsoft is now going to spends billions to kill the current patent system."
What in the world makes you think that? MS has a lot more to gain from patents then they do from them going away.
Sure MS isn't as big a patent player as some of the other companies, but if some of their recent patents hold up the Computer and Electronics world will be paying MS royalties for the next 20 years.
No MS isn't killing anything, especially the golden goose which is going to ensure they get paid.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
"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.
IT DOESN'T MATTER what their "intentions" are.. This case clearly shows how silly software patent-laws are. With guns and sanctions they dictate who can use what technology, because someone were "first". Come on! Most of us stopped such silliness in the kindergarden.
What makes this a rather ironical and humorous case though, is the target - behemot Microsoft. It'll probably be overruled in the next run, but nobody is safe with such laws. Who's going to risk developing stuff when you're sued left and right before you even know somebody filed a patent for it while you RDed? This can potentially kill off alot of inventing. Without somebody with lots of money backing you up, it's a risky business.. Which is what the big corporations want anyways, so maybe Microsoft will settle this one in the end..
It's not amazing at all really, it's Astounding.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
- 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.
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.
``I'm sure you meant "IE is available free of charge".''
No it is not - it is integrated with one of the OS'es. And to get IE you have to buy that OS.
Bill may be selling, but he hasn't sold 75% of his stock.