Microsoft Wins Summary Judgement in Smart Tag Case

dan2bit writes "Business Week reports that a judge in Wisconsin handed down a summary judgement today in favor of Microsoft, defending itself from a patent infringement suit brought by small fish Hyperphrase over the embedding of 'Smart Tags' in Microsoft Office. The suit also produced some amusing minutiae."

Comments

Prior art

[bouvin]

The concept behind SmartTags is hardly new - one well-known (at least in hypermedia research, which happens to be my area) example would be 'generic link' found in the Microcosm open hypermedia system, which was first published in Andrew M. Fountain, Wendy Hall, Ian Heath, Hugh C. Davis: MICROCOSM: An Open Model for Hypermedia with Dynamic Linking. ECHT 1990: 298-311.

The generic link designates a link with a selection as source (this would in the simplest case be a string, but could be e.g. a image) and a specific destination. Thus, whereever the selection is encountered, there is a link to the destination. This functionality has been reimplemented a number of times in various open hypermedia systems.

Re:Oh no the summary wasn't late

[NanoGator]

"If MS loses, they will bitch about stupid patent laws."

Microsoft has quite the double standard here on Slashdot. Everybody wants MS punished. They want to see MS hurt. Unfortunately, it is rare that anybody puts any thought into the consequences of punishing Microsoft. Just like you brought up here, it was probably better for Microsoft to win instead of lose. When the Blaster worm made its rounds, people here were saying "Why isn't Microsoft being held liable?" Sounds great, doesn't it? Make Microsoft pay for their 'negligence'. Never mind that somebody was getting away with being a malicious asshole and Microsoft was being punished for it, no no no, Microsoft should be punished for not being pyschic and predicting that an exploit would be.. uh. exploited. If Microsoft were to be liable for defects like that, then in all fairness, individuals of the OSS Community would risk being liable for somebody else's malicious use. So, in short, Linux could find itself vulernable to whatever punishment is dealt to Microsoft in a case like that.

Be careful about what you wish for. If you want Microsoft to be punished, that's perfectly okay, just be careful that they don't get punished in a way that burns you.