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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."
I'm sure that Microsoft will blame the delay on Unix Mailservers, while at the same time promote Exchange.
Pursuant to the modified scheduling order, the parties in this case had until June 25, 2003 to file summary judgment motions. Any electronic document may be e-filed until midnight on the due date. In a scandalous affront to this court's deadlines, Microsoft did not file its summary judgment motion until 12:04:27 a.m. on June 26, 2003, with some supporting documents trickling in as late as 1:11:15 a.m.
The message WAS actually sent June 23, but the exchange server was down until the 25th.
Unless the clock on the court's server was using NTP or equivalant, it probably was not completely accurate. Of course there is no mention of the clock's accuracy, but how can you make a judgement without this information?
And anyway, it's four minutes and 27 seconds, c'mon!
"Now that's...COMEDY."
--Slappy Squirrel
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
The problem is that the court has not upgraded to MS Time.
In any case, good for the court on putting the ridiculousness of the situation in writing. I mean, if the litigators are going to disrespect the court by wasting its time with ridiculous motions, they may be obligated to follow along, but they can at least put their own disrespect for the litigants in evidence.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
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.
--- In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro
On a more on-topic ms note, I just saw an add on
We now have to pay to use a protocol? yuwah?
Heres ya' link to it: http://m3.doubleclick.net/790463/mrs03124_ha_728x
puts ("Python r0cks\n");
five minutes and twenty-seven seconds of my life wasted reading that stuff. I move to strike Hyperphrase's lawyers in the head for being so damn annoying.
Notice that the court listed the names of all the lawyers on the team that submitted that motion, so that any time someone does a lexus-type search for any one of those lawyers, that filing will come up, thus embarassing them for years to come. The court put some thought into that one.
From Hyperphrase's motion to strike the summary judgment motion as untimely: Counsel used bolded italics to make their point, a clear sign of grievous iniquity by one's foe. AT LEAST THEY DIDN'T COMPAIN IN ALL CAPS!!!!! THAT REALLY WOULD HAVE GOTTEN THE JUDGE'S ATTENTION!!!!
Give serendipity a chance.
"Crabb agreed with Microsoft's argument that XML-based Smart Tags operate differently from Hyperphrase's methods and therefore aren't covered by the patents."
When this issue originally came up many people were hoping that Microsoft might argue against the legality of software patents in general. They completely side stepped the issue. What's going to happen when Ogg gets sued by Fraunhofer and company?
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
This was a chuckle and a half. I can't understand all you who think it was boring. Apparently the $5 and $10 words scared you off.
I had never seen flyspeck used as a verb before...
Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake hailed the ruling. "As an intellectual property company, we are committed to respecting the intellectual property of others, but we also invest heavily in R&D and we will defend our intellectual property when necessary,"
She continued "We be payin props ta doz silly azz mofos intalectual propertiez, but they'ze disrespectin' ours. Whats up with that shiznat dogz?"
------
If you don't stop reading this right now you owe me $1,000. Send check or money order too...
Maybe the judge should've used tags? I thought it was pretty funny, (maybe because I could imagine the opinion being read by one of John Cleese's characters.)
They used bold italics?!?! Screw diplomacy! This is a full-on war!
Any defeat of a patent is good news.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Software patents are like nuclear weapons, their scare value is far superior to their actual use.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I thought that many slashdotters want MS to win this case? I guess there's no way to stop slashdotters from bitching.
If MS loses, they will bitch about stupid patent laws.
IF MS wins, they will bitch about how courts always go for big businesses.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Judge Kent is bar far one of the funniest judges on the federal bench. I strongly comment a quick read of his opinion in this case, which concerned a motion drafted in crayon.
Groan...I'm switching majors. Or shooting myself.
Would you like to download PrecisionTime from the Gator Corporation?
[Yes] [OK] [Sure]
After this remarkably long walk on a short legal pier, having received no useful guidance whatever from either party, the Court has endeavored, primarily based upon its affection for both counsel, but also out of its own sense of morbid curiosity, to resolve what it perceived to be the legal issue presented. Despite the waste of perfectly good crayon seen in both parties' briefing (and the inexplicable odor of wet dog emanating from such) the Court believes it has satisfactorily resolved this matter. Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED.
At this juncture, Plaintiff retains, albeit seemingly to his befuddlement and/or consternation, a maritime law cause of action versus his alleged Jones Act employer, Defendant Unity Marine Corporation, Inc. However, it is well known around these parts that Unity Marine's lawyer is equally likable and has been writing crisply in ink since the second grade. Some old-timers even spin yarns of an ability to type. The Court cannot speak to the veracity of such loose talk, but out of caution, the Court suggests that Plaintiff's lovable counsel had best upgrade to a nice shiny No. 2 pencil or at least sharpen what's left of the stubs of his crayons for what remains of this heart-stopping, spine-tingling action.
In either case, the Court cautions Plaintiff's counsel not to run with a sharpened writing utensil in hand -- he could put his eye out.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
I fail to see the reason for sarcasm. Yes, it sounds like in this case, punctuality may not have mattered. But in other cases, the difference between 11:59pm and 12:01am could be billions of dollars.
When a court sets a deadline, people should be expected to stick to it. If, in this case, the court decided that it wanted to ignore its own deadline, that's its choice. But would have been perfectly acceptable and entirely reasonable for it to throw out any documents submitted even a second late.
"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.
"Derp de derp."
Wounded though this court may be by Microsoft's four minute and twenty-seven second dereliction of duty, it will transcend the affront and forgive the tardiness. Indeed, to demonstrate the even-handedness of its magnanimity, the court will allow Hyperphrase on some future occasion in this case to e-file a motion four minutes and thirty seconds late, with supporting documents to follow up to seventy-two minutes later.
The judge is forgiving Microsoft for filing late, and is basically telling Hyperphrase to stop being a pain in the ass.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Wounded though this court may be by Microsoft's four minute and twenty-seven second dereliction of duty, it will transcend the affront and forgive the tardiness. Indeed, to demonstrate the even-handedness of its magnanimity, the court will allow Hyperphrase on some future occasion in this case to e-file a motion four minutes and thirty seconds late, with supporting documents to follow up to seventy-two minutes later.
Having spent more than that amount of time on Hyperphrase's motion, it is now time to move on to the other Gordian problems confronting this court. Plaintiff's motion to strike is denied.
"I think the U.N. is going to find that the blame lies with all the Sudanese rap music that glamorizes genocide."
Generally speaking, any irregularity should make the court even more reluctant to grant summary judgment. The judge here granted summary judgment even after acknowledging that Microsoft was too late to file - and mocked the plaintiffs for objecting at all! I would expect that Hyperphrase is going to be filing their appeal to the district judge in the very near future.
The judge is forgiving Microsoft for filing late, and is basically telling Hyperphrase to stop being a pain in the ass.
Deadlines exist for a reason. If there weren't definite rules for when and in what order things needed to happen in litigation, the courts would be much more inefficient, and people in court would be denied their constitutional right to due process. Yeah, it's funny that Microsoft filed five minutes late - but there's a big difference between some prisoner struggling to represent himself who files five minutes late, and an enormous multinational corporation with gigantic legal resources doing the same thing. A wink and a nod is inappropriate here.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Ogg is a container format. As far as I know, no one is seriously claiming patent protection on the idea of a container format.
Vorbis is a codec that does the same job as MP3 (only better). The Ogg guys worked very hard, with lawyers vetting the code at each stage of development, to make darn sure that no patents apply to anything in Vorbis. It would have been done a lot sooner if they hadn't had to do this.
Theora is a video codec, based on a video codec called VP3. The guys who developed VP3, On2, have patents that cover VP3, and they signed a complete and irrevokable release to allow Theora to be completely free software. I think Theora is what you were thinking of.
And the Ogg code is available under a BSD license, to speed the adoption by commercial entities. Originally they were using LGPL but enough people were worried about viral IP issues that they went to the BSD license.
<pedantic>
And it's codec or codecs, not codex. A codex is a book.
</pedantic>
Want to know more? Check out the Ogg page at xiph.org.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely