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

Filing not late

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

... But was the courts clock accurate?

[mdvolm]

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!

Re:... But was the courts clock accurate?

[broken.data]

I have been burned by banks clocks and the CCRA (Canadian Customs and Revenue Service) for filing my income tax 27 seconds late since their server was slow as hell.

Tell me that 2% interest on $18,000 owing for that space of time is not going to piss you off. ($360 for the math impaired)

Jokey Judge

[Atario]

Counsel used bolded italics to make their point, a clear sign of grievous iniquity by one's foe.

"Now that's...COMEDY."
--Slappy Squirrel

Obviously...

[Bodrius]

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.

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.

The judge left an extra surprise for them

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

AT LEAST THEY DIDN'T USE ALL CAPS

[LeBain]

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!!!!

Re:AT LEAST THEY DIDN'T USE ALL CAPS

[FreeLinux]

Lawyers love all caps and they use them frequently on most legal documents. For some reason the law seems to think that being all caps makes the document even more binding than if they used lower case.

Nothing to do with legality of software patent law

[fredistheking]

"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 there if you can bear the rest...

[IthnkImParanoid]

Granted, you have to wade through a lot of legal mumbo jumbo, but it was worth it for this:

Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact ? complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words ? to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions.

Just what I needed

[dbavirt]

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...

Patents bad. Even worse than Microsoft.

[Thinkit3]

Any defeat of a patent is good news.

Re:Oh no the summary wasn't late

[Bull999999]

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.

Judge Kent's Pigs

[werdna]

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.

Re:Judge Kent's Pigs

[jonblaze]

Actually, the briefs weren't drafted in crayon--that memorandum was just another example of Judge Kent bullying from the bench.

Re:Lawyer humor

[NOLAChief]

Finally, a profession with a worse sense of humor than we engineers are accused of. From a Tulane American Society of Mechanical Engineers t-shirt: "You wish you were as cool...AS-ME."

Groan...I'm switching majors. Or shooting myself.

Your court's clock may not be accurate!

[BigRedFish]

Would you like to download PrecisionTime from the Gator Corporation?

[Yes] [OK] [Sure]

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.

The judge's decision was outrageous.

[ArsSineArtificio]

I've clerked for a federal magistrate, and written several orders granting or denying summary judgment, and I found the order extremely surprising. Microsoft was moving for summary judgment, which is a basically a legal determination that it is so obvious that Microsoft will win that the case shouldn't even bother to proceed. As makes sense, the burden of proof is on Microsoft to have a really good reason for claiming this, and the court should be reluctant to grant it.

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.