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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.
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?
for $440 million im sure microsoft can develop a DRM system 100000x better then what they have right now
Based on their record thus far, zero times "100000" still doesn't add to much.
Trolling is a art,
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.
You don't understand. This is $440 Million that Microsoft gave to InterTrust so that InterTrust would have a big warchest to go after everyone except Microsoft who tries to compete with Microsoft. It's a drop in the bucket to Microsoft (see the last few weekly Cringley articles), and it is an even better way to grab position than to give SCO money under the table to have them try to kill Linux.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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?
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.
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."
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
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
"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