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Microsoft Pays $440M to License InterTrust Patents
theodp writes "Microsoft is paying $440 million to InterTrust to settle a three-year-old patent infringement lawsuit over DRM technology for protecting music, movies and other digital content against piracy. Under the settlement agreement, customers can use Microsoft products and services without a license from InterTrust. Developers, however, may need a license from InterTrust for other uses, including the combination of Microsoft technology with third-party technology." C.J. adds a link to the New York Times' coverage of the settlement.
$440 million? Eeeek.. thats a lot of money for something that seems to relatively simple :-/ I mean, for $440 million im sure microsoft can develop a DRM system 100000x better then what they have right now.
I've been wondering if the implication is what I think it is... if you use MS software through-and-through you're fine, but if you mix software from multiple companies, you're liable to InterTrust for royalties?
Could MS have crafted a sweeter deal if they tried? (ya know, other than the half billion dollar payout)
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Thats what, roughly 1% of their total cash? Between this at the UK trouble they are down 2%.
Keep chipping away fellas.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/12/ms_settles _intertrust/
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
what is the cost benefit analysis of this? would microsoft have saved money if they had simply licensed everything first, or is the $440 million cheaper? i imagine that big software companies do the same kind of CBA that auto companies and the FAA do.
It reaffirms that Microsoft will respect your intellectual property rights when they can't assimilate them by brute force.
Hey, for once I like software patents (I know, hypocracy and such). If someone's patented DRM in general (anything's possible it seems), maybe they can go SCO and stop all the other companies from implementing DRM. We might get a break from this mess.
Also, I'll be the first(?) to point out the irony in this. These people are so concerned with Intellectual Property, but they are infringing on it themselves. Not that they're "at fault", but that the system is messed up.
Sorry but that rings a few bells there, Big-Ben sized bells. If it was really tha important to them in the first place wouldnt they have sorted it out when it was first found to have occured? It seems to me that microsoft are completely willing to put individual people in jail for minor acts of copyright infringement but when it comes to a whole company theyre more than happy just to pay them off and hope it all goes away.
3rd monitary payout from them in a pretty short period of time. Makes me wonder if they think they can just pay everyone off (has worked so far).
Microsoft® has a new head of it's leagl department. Thats what up. Settling and trying to hold on to it's money. If they had lost ( just might have) they would have spent more. This make good business sense. I still hate their guts but it makes sense.
Look for them to make more settlements.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
Check out the BBC's article: Microsoft settles patents case
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Patents are also there so that some company doesnt just go off and say take apart an ipod and make a complete copy of it and sell it as their own. Patents arent EVIL, its the people that abuse the parents that are dipshits.
Thank god patents are so expensive. I wouldn't want a new class of average joes filing for thousands of stupid patents. We have had enough of that with cybersquatters and spammers.
Three drops in a very large $40 billion bucket, unfortunately.
1. License DRM patents
2. Release DRM Software
3. Wait for DMCA to get struck down as a show of good faith
4. Sue unsuspecting F/OSS developers writing a WMP DRM bypasser for xmms for "patent infringement"
5. ???
6. Profit!
--- You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad- Neal (not Cowboy) Boortz
This is soooo just like SCO trying to make money on linux. I hope they lose!
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Microsoft pays $440M to license InterTrode Patents?
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
I know they are a huge company...but I really don't see how they can afford to keep losing money like they do. A few billion to Sun here, millions to BeOS here, $440 million for some patents, losing millions on X-Box, millions in lawsuits and fines, funding SCO, etc. It seems that eventually they'd run low on cash to throw away on stupid crap...but I've never had billions of dollars so I guess I wouldn't know.
Dammit! It seems like everything bad that happens to Microsoft, Microsoft turns around and uses it in their favor...
I mean:
- States sue Microsoft for abusing monopoly powers; Microsoft pays lawsuit with Microsoft products that indoctrinate kids (future buyers) into Microsoft products.
- Microsoft sues Lindows for it's impossible common word trademark of windows in US courts. Microsoft loses. Microsoft sues Lindows in other world courts; Lindows is forced to change name. Microsoft loses, yet wins. Lindows runs out of lawsuit money.
- States sue Microsoft over alleged undocumented Windows routines that allow MS software to run better on Windows than other software. Source code is released later on that shows MS lied in court. Nothing happens to MS!
How is this new lawsuit good for anything but Microsoft? It's like Microsoft basically paid $440million to ensure that 3rd party software has a disadvantage - something Microsoft has already been sued for! This, once again, screws consumers by causing 3rd party manufacturers to pay more for licensing and allows MS to eat another market.
MS is really clever at screwing us all in the ass as efficiently as possible.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Now everyone knows why Microsoft was sitting on all that cash: they're gonna buy their way outta trouble. Why not? It's easier for them to buy their way out of trouble.
Andd after all that, they'll still have billions and billions lying around to cross-subsidize their money-losing ventures. Those money-losing ventures, of course, include almost everything Microsoft does except Windows and Office.
Microsoft's new slogan should be "Innovating financial solutions to legal problems."
$440 000 000? Tiny. M$ got a contract for $470 000 000 for the U.S. military. Even if there was 5 or 6 of these big suits annually that had a half billion fine M$ would still turn a profit.
Moo!
4) Patents CANNOT be bought and defended by "small" people. Patents cost about 40,000 EUROS a pop and this is not money for the "small" company. This is money for the large company.
Except in New Zealand where registration ony costs a few hundred bucks and the patent office prefers to let the courts decide what is a valid patent, or not. Makes us a lovely target for people wanting to lauch their patent portfolio. Good, eh?
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
If nothing else, this really indicates to me just how much money Microsoft has, and what a slap on the wrist the potential EU anti-trust fine is.
customers can use Microsoft products and services without a license from InterTrust.
Wait, is this saying that Microsoft hasn't indemnified its customers against these sorts of claims? Stupifying. Anyone alerted Didiot? She might want to write an article.
Do you have ESP?
A patent is a gun that costs $10000 to buy, and a million dollars to shoot. You've just solved the $10k problem -- for New Zealand only. If you want a worldwide patent, you still have to pay out that $10k.
Kindof reminds me of the lightbulb. According to Scientific American, Edison's notebook includes a cutout article about Swan's use of a carbon filament. On the next page, "It works!"
http://www.acmi.net.au/AIC/SWAN_BIO.html
Anyhow, Swan managed to maintain his patents in England, but Edison essentially won for the rest of the world. So I guess that a NZ patent would be okay in NZ.
Except that to reasonably defend a NZ patent, you probably have to be a NZ resident...
Let's face it. The powerless are not going to use power to steal power from the powerful. It just ain't gonna happen.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
"I have nurtured you and made you strong. Attack my enemies forthwith and destroy all rivals to my power!"
Shouldn't mix this cough medicine with caffeine...
Patents also encourage people to invent and innovate. Basically, any invention or novel piece of engineering would immediately be copied by competitors. If you make some nifty widget, as soon as you come to market with it, much larger and more established companies will immediate copy and undersell you (economies of scale).
Folks like Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segway, along with a host of other things) wouldn't exist without patents. They enable and encourage individuals and smaller companies to be inventive, because they will be able to capitalize on their idea. Patents allow people to be professional inventors, much like copyrights allow people to be professional authors or musicians.
So, I'd argue against your premise that they 'do nothing but slow down an industry and promote laziness'. A patent-less industry would immediately boil down to the biggest manufacturers. Soviet Russia is an example of a such an industry...technological development lagged very much behind the west.
Here is an earlier article discussing the Intertrust patents, and their apparent broadness. There are links to the actual patents themselves.
As other posters have noted, this settlement gives Intertrust a leg up on the competition (which they probably will sue now).
It would be an interesting exercise to see if there are any publications that discuss "trusted computing" prior to the Intertrust patents.
Also, Intel announced a mobile cpu that has a DRM coprocessor in the same package. Intel could head this direction with all their chips.
Given all the evils of DRM, I would rather see a chip from Intel with DRM succeed, rather than using Microsoft palladium, Phoenix DRM bios, or other software component. Having it in hardware makes it a level playing field for every developer, commercial or open source. I am not saying any of it is good, only what the lesser of evils would be.
Preferably their would be an open source competitive solution.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
It is more likely that InterTrust wanted to be paid with a lump sum instead of by royalties...
The last company who licensed technology to Microsoft on a royalty basis ended up getting nothing from Microsoft because they gave it away for 'free' so there was no royalty to pay.
You may have heard of them: The company is SpyGlass... the software they wrote is what you know now as Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The directors behind SpyGlass tried to sue Microsoft - but ran out of money. So they have quit the PC Software business alltogether.
So, IMO, InterTrust is smart to negotiate a lump sum payment... Obviously, they couldn't trust Microsoft to honor their side of a royalty-based agreement.
BTW, there are other situations where Microsoft licensed technologies on a royalty basis and then gave them away 'free' to avoid having to pay any royalties.
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
2 Billion to Sun.
v estor/lamonica/)
1/2 Billion to Intertrust.
Only another 50.4 odd Billion to go!
(MS has 52.8 Billion in the bank: http://money.cnn.com/2004/02/26/technology/techin
I have a very small mind and must live with it.
-- E. Dijkstra
Consider the fact that patents were never as outragous as they are now. Now consider the fact that large corporations have the most influence on political decisions. Now imagine what your going against. By simply saying that patents are alright under certain circumstances you give them something to stand on. Who decides these circumstances? The ones with the money. We can not simply "fix" the patent system, because to do so would mean some force needs to cause this fix to happen. Where is this force going to come from? Scientists, engineers, teachers, etc? Not really, because it is already apparent that most of them believe that we just need some "fix" to the system. Well, maybe people will get together and say we need a fix. So what do we agree is the fix? Not everyone has the same idea on what a "fix" to the system should be. A lot of arguing amongst the common person, and the lawyers, companies, and wealthy investors make the final choice anyway. Patents are about control. Before communication had reached the level it is today, control did help in progressing science and technology due to reasons I will not go into because I do not have space or time for that. Today, it has a lot less effect on progress and instead hinders it. Go ahead, put some real thought into the effect of the patent. Consider the fact that it was originally created to help secure investment. Now think about what it means to invest in science and technology in todays world. More educated people today and better communication than ever before. Resources? This is the information age. Imagine two choices. The complete destruction of all of our technology, or the complete destruction of all of our knowledge. Which is more valuable? So why make the system of knowledge so complex that it is entangled in an entire web of legal and political arguments?
Or maybe we can "fix" the system, but some level of control still creates problems, and therefore hinders progress. The question is, how much hindering are we willing to put up with? How many more lawyers do we need to argue the laws? How many more lawsuits until half our population is working on interpretting law?
Question everything.
Software built in India or China will not be legal in the US if they don't adhere to these ridiculous software patents.
It will be almost impossible to sell software in the US, whether it's made domestically or internationally, because it's practically impossible to make software that's legal in the US.
The US will become a software 3rd world country if you don't repeal the software patent law.
- -- Truth addict for life.
I was reading the history of the laser here and found no mention of your story about a laser patent. The only mention of patent troubles actually had to do with the original inventor NOT recieving a patent. Are you sure your story is accurate? I always thought the reason for the "explosion" of lasers had nothing to do with patents but rather that there were technological developments that made the lasers cheap enough to be used in every day applications.
Isn't there some minor irony in ripping off someone else's DRM scheme?
Patents are not for some little guy to sit on and block everyone out of the market. That's stupid. They're for the little guy to block EVERYONE ELSE out of the market. Patents do NOT GUARANTEE you the ability to be IN the market. That's what you need before you spend the copius amount of money that is needed for a solid patent.
Patents should be used as a competitive advantage. They are not evil. They are vital to the growth of small technology companies, as they are protections and competitive advantages to avoid getting trampled by some of the tech-mammoths out there. Startups usually have the ability to create whatever they have patented, and it allows them time to get on their feet and make some money on the idea before they get trampled.
Another note:
Does anyone else see the trend of Microsoft paying out huge settlements right now? Either their lawyers got too expensive, or they're trying to clean up their image, and get out of the legal spotlight. I'm suspicious, but money flow is good for the economy, even if it is probably going to an anti-linux warchest fund.
"The US will become a software 3rd world country if you don't repeal the software patent law."
In most third world countries a handful of people control virtually all the wealth. There are just a few very powerful companies and tons of little mom and pop grocery stores.
Seems to me we are well on our way.
evil is as evil does
Hahaha, you are kidding, right? Go read at the WIPO site as well as the New Zealand Min. of Econ. Development and educate yourself on difference between the right to exclude others from making/using/selling the invention nationally and internationally.
I am so disgusted with you that I even went to this link to pull a quote for you:
"A patent will only protect your invention within New Zealand. To obtain overseas patent protection, two options are available:
* Filing applications with intellectual property offices in overseas countries of interest; or
* Filing an International Application under the Patent Co-Operation Treaty (PCT). "
Now stop talking about how cheap is it to obtain internationally applicable patent protection through the New Zealand system and instead fuck off, pardon my French.
Software built in India or China will not be legal in the US if they don't adhere to these ridiculous software patents.
That's not a problem.
Software will be made in India, China and elsewhere, and web sites based there will sell their software over the Internet to US customers, despite the infringement of US patents. US home customers are sure to buy and use it, even when businesses daren't.
Ironically, the shareholders will be based in the US for a while longer. Looks like you guys are funding your own replacements! :)
This will extend to programmable consumer hardware too. For example, patent-infringing mobile phones from China face obstacles to being sold in the US (except on the black market), but firmware upgrades which add new features can easily be sold over the 'net.
There are two ways for the US to retain its market strength. One is to cut down on its own patents and reduce the economic friction they cause; the other is to extend the friction to other countries. The latter strategy seems to have the upper hand right now, and is one reason for the push toward global patent treaties. Fingers crossed.
-- Jamie
The parent post is stolen, except for the first paragraph, word-for-word from this post by Animats (122034).
It was stolen via the anti-slash.org database
Mod parent down.
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