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MS-Sun Agreement Leaves Opening For OO.org Suits
newentiti writes "We all know Microsoft paid $900,000,000.00 to Sun and they also signed a LIMITED PATENT COVENANT AND STAND-STILL AGREEMENT. The agreement basically states that Microsoft will not sue Sun for any patents for the next 10 years and vice versa. What's really interesting is that according to this story the agreement had a special provision that lets Microsoft sue anybody, including Sun, over OpenOffice.org. I wonder what Microsoft had in mind?"
Here's the original SEC document: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/709519/00011931 2504155723/dex10109.htm
"My girlfriend's got sodium laureth sulfate hair."
Quote...
According to the recently released financial documents to the SEC, besides the 900,000,000.00 being paid to Sun, a LIMITED PATENT COVENANT AND STAND-STILL AGREEMENT was also enacted.
IV. PROVISIONS RELATING TO OPEN OFFICE
1. Notwithstanding the other provisions of this Agreement, with respect solely to the product developed by Sun and generally known as Open Office, the Covenants of Section II above and the Releases of Section III above shall apply fully to Sun but shall not apply to Authorized Licensees of Open Office or any other third party. Accordingly, Microsoft shall not be foreclosed by this Agreement from seeking damages from Authorized Licensees of Open Office for copies of Open Office made or acquired prior to the Effective Date of this Agreement. Nor shall Microsoft be foreclosed from seeking any damages from Sun, its Affiliates, Authorized Licensees or any third party for any copies of Open Office made or deployed by a User after the Effective Date.
So basically, while Microsoft will not sue Sun for any patents for the next 10 years and visa versa (Cross Licensing Agreement). Microsoft can sue anybody, including Sun over Open Office (Sun's Star Office is protected). This is probably as close as Microsoft can legally get to buying Open Office.
The rest states that Sun has to give Microsoft legal aid in bringing lawsuits against users of Open Office. Also, Microsoft will pay Sun a confidential sum for its troubles for providing that legal aid.
2. In the event that Microsoft elects to sue or otherwise seek recovery from an Authorized Licensee of Open Office for copies thereof that were made and deployed by a User prior to the Effective Date of this Agreement ("Deployed Copies"), upon request, Microsoft agrees to promptly reimburse Sun for any reimbursable Damages. Sun shall promptly notify Microsoft of any Claim, shall provide Microsoft with the opportunity to take control over and responsibility for the defense and/or settlement of such Claim, and shall reasonably cooperate with Microsoft in litigating the defense of such Claim, including in all discovery and trial preparation efforts. Microsoft will not have any obligation to reimburse Reimbursable Damages unless Sun abides by the foregoing requirements. Microsoft shall also be relieved of its obligation to reimburse Reimbursable Damages if Sun breaches any warranty in Section VII.4. As a condition to accepting control and responsibility for such defense, Microsoft shall acknowledge in writing that such third party claim constitutes a "Claim" and, as such, would give rise to Reimbursable Damages if determined adversely. In the event that Microsoft accepts control and responsibility for such defense, Sun shall be entitled to participate in such defense at its own cost. "Claim" means any claim that Sun is liable to indemnify or otherwise reimburse any Authorized Licensee or third party for damages it has been ordered to pay by final judgment or settlement arising from a claim asserted by Microsoft against such Authorized Licensee or third party that any Deployed Copy of Open Office infringes any patent of Microsoft. "Reimbursable Damages" means the amount of any adverse final judgment awarded by a court of competent jurisdiction, or Microsoft approved settlement, against Sun that is based on the Claim.
3. The Parties acknowledge that the product currently marketed by Sun as Star Office shall not be affected by this Section IV.
LIMITED PATENT COVENANT AND STAND-STILL AGREEMENT
File formats are not patentable, trademarkable or copyrightable. However, certain algorithms used to generate their contents may be patented.
What is up with people saying 'visa versa' rather than 'vice versa' (pronounced VICE-uh VERSE-uh, but I hear no -uh on VICE more often, which I think is okay)
:)
vice/vix is latin for position. I don't think visa is anything in latin, or if it is I don't think it would make sense.
No dictionary lists 'visa versa' or 'visa verse'. Most of them list 'vice versa'. I wish I knew why so many people say/spell 'visa'. (I'm guessing they say "vice-uh", and think it's spelled 'visa'. but in english visa would be 'vee-za')
Here's a hint to everyone. Whenever you use a word or phrase, even a simple one you've used since you were a child. Look up it's meaning. It only takes a few minutes and you can use language more effectively if you have a more precise idea of a word's meaning. If you do this consistently, when you go to look up "visa versa" and find it's not there you'd realize the mistake.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I like to explain it this way... copyright covers the implementation while patents cover the idea itself.
An idea can have a lot of different implementations (ones that you copy or come up with in a clean room).
(and yes even this analogy isn't 100% on the mark, but it helps people to start thinking correctly about patents)
They would have to be selective with this. Its in their best interest for 3rd parties to be able to (easily) use the Office file formats, just as it is in Microsoft's best interest for 3rd parties to (easily) develop Windows software. Office is a ver extensable package.
See: The Office Developer Center and XML in Office
They lay it all right out there. I've done work in the past that required me to integrate with Office (i.e. web app needed to make current data from a DB available in Office formats) and their guide to the XML format not only made it possible, it made it really easy.
SPAM
Nope, that's how trade secrets work. A patent is a state-granted artificial monopoly on a certain device/technique/whatever that applies regardless of how any other party develops it. This is why patents are not secret -- in fact, anything you patent must be published and available to the public (IIRC, this includes source code or at least pseudocode for software patents).
If I have a trade secret (which, along with copyright, were the "traditional" ways software IP was protected), I have legal protection against corporate espionage and certain types of reverse engineering. But, if someone develops a device or technique that duplicates my trade secret on his own, he can use it. This is in contrast to a patent, where I must give all of my competitors the specifications of my device or technique in return for legal protection from their implementing such a device or technique without a license from me.
All's true that is mistrusted
Wanna see something extra amazing?!?!
Using quotes in the google search reveals only ~95,000 mis-uses.
But the text says "generally known as open office" so here's a catch. On the other hand, Sun will never be able to remove code from openoffice.org:
From thje openoffice.org website:
3. Can Sun ever take away the code? The simple answer to this is NO. Once code is released under the LGPL, it can never be taken away. Once LGPL, always LGPL. Sun has no plans to return to a closed-development model. Sun is subject to the same rules as the rest of the community, including giving back modifications under the LGPL (or a specification and reference implementation under the terms of the SISSL). Thus, Sun can never take away the code and the community's contributions to it. This code belongs to the community as guaranteed by the LGPL and the SISSL.
" I like to explain it this way... copyright covers the implementation while patents cover the idea itself."
Not true.
You specifically can NOT patent an idea. You can on;y patent methods of imnplementing an idea. Your patent must describe in detail everything necesasry to recreate your specific implementation (although you can cover many different implementations of the same idea within the one patent).
That is why patents describe "A method for blah blah blah" - it's the methods which are patented, not the concept of blah blah blah itself.
A subtle but VERY important difference.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
"Are you gay?"
why, just because he referred to his "domestic partner"?
Stop showing your ignorance.
Many US companies offer spousal benefits for unmarried couples, regardless of orientation, and they refer to them as "domestic partners".
The phrase means nothing about gender or orientation.
Many people, even in "conventional" relationships, are more comfortable using "domestic partner" than "wife" or BF or GF. I myself often refer to my "domestic partner" or my "S.O." when posting, because I think my gender should be irrelevant to readers' reactions.
You're not a representative sampling of the world. Get over it.
Gee, let's see. So if Ford sells a car with faulty brakes, and someone gets killed when they fail, and the brakes are named in a class-action suit, all Ford needs to do is change the brand name of the brakes to nullify the lawsuit? Is that kinda what you were thinking?
In other words...no.
how do you explain problems with GIF and JPEG file formats...
I believe the big issue was with the patented LZW compression algorithm that GIF uses rather than the file format itself. Here's the first link I found on Google.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
NO! The GPL expressly prohibits distributing code that is encumbered with a patent. If GPL code is released with something under a software patent, then the use of that patent must be allowed where ever that code goes.
Fortunately for us, their autohinting algorithms turned out to produce better results than explicit hinting.
You obviously either aren't a typographer, or haven't looked at a system with explicit hinting enabled recently.
The difference is visible -- and the advantage does NOT belong to the auto-hinters.
You're probably thinking of the effect autohinting has on UNHINTED fonts, where it's definitely an improvement; there are whole families of fonts I happily use on Linux which I can't bear to look at in Windows because of the lack of hinting. But where high-quality hinting information is present, it is simply visibly orders of magnitude better than the best autohinters I've ever seen.
Note also that autohinters work pretty well with Western typefaces, but generally produce pretty dire results for other scripts. Let's just say you wouldn't be championing them if you were Chinese.
Here's a hint to everyone. Whenever you use a word or phrase, even a simple one you've used since you were a child.
The one that always drives me insane is when people write "For all intensive purposes" when they mean "For all intents and purposes"
Some countries' laws (like my own) FORBID patenting of software. We will welcome OOo developers down here and treat them like kings, for our Large government is using more and more.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Disclaimer: I am a Mac OS X community developer for OpenOffice.org and a founding member of NeoOffice
.doc and other Office formats. So they were clever...
.doc format...but Microsoft has prevented anyone from using their patented schema in a "free as in beer" environment. These clauses in TFA allow Sun a cop-out: Sun can freely write code and use it in OOo that uses the Microsoft Office XML schemas. In the Sun-branded OOo distributions (Linux-x86, Solaris, Solaris-x86, Windows only...they have a Sun logo on the startup screen) Sun is free to use the patented Office schemas as well. Because of this, Sun will most likely contribute the code to work with these schemas into the core source code of OOo.
There is one obvious reason for this clause that I can think of off of the top of my head. Microsoft Office XP has a feature by which Office documents can be saved in an XML format. Obviously, this means that the information in the resulting Microsoft Office generated files is not as obfuscated as it is in a binary format (provided key information isn't just base64 encoded into elements). Microsoft knows this feature can negate the lock-in to
Microsoft has patented their XML schemas. In order to write software that uses these Microsoft Office XML schemas, you must sign a patent license with Microsoft.
Obviously, OOo will want to be able to open these new Microsoft Office XML formatted files similar to its support for the
Other companies make derivatives of OOo too (Red Hat, Novell/Ximian, BSDMall), individuals like myself, and even just translators non-Sun builds for mainline platforms who don't program at all. The Sun-MS agreement says that Sun's patent licensing for the Office Schemas does not apply to any OOo derivatives or builds that are done outside of Sun. Either all of these companies and individuals need to sign the Patent License Agreement with Sun or else they are open to lawsuits from Microsoft and potentially pay royalties to Microsoft in the future to use their schema.
It's really another clever way Microsoft has come up with to continue to ensure their file formats remain closely guarded and their own property.
As to whether a patent of an XML Schema can stand up in court, well, I know I personally as a single developer don't have the kind of money to challenge Microsoft on patent litigation if they sue me as an individual. Unfortunatley I have neither the time nor the skills to scrutinize all of Sun's contributions to OpenOffice.org's source code to see if they use Microsoft's patents in such a way that's legal for them, but not legal for me. I either must take my chances or stop being a non-Sun developer of OpenOffice.org. Unfortunately now any non-Sun entity working on OOo has to make that choice for themselves.
ed
>5,634,064
Method and apparatus for viewing electronic documents
>5,737,599
Method and apparatus for downloading multi-page electronic documents with hint information
>5,781,785
Method and apparatus for providing an optimized document file of multiple pages
Etc,etc. They're patents relating to the use and distribution of pdfs, rather than the format of the file itself.
A critical aspect not mentioned in the summary that users should be aware of is mentioned in this article:
Not only is Microsoft allowed to sue any company.including Sun.for
alleged patent violations connected with OpenOffice, but Sun is required to
provide Microsoft with legal help in bringing such lawsuits against OpenOffice
users.
I.E.: When MS asks (and it will), Sun will be giving it their OpenOffice registration database. So unless you want to get sued later, beware of the answers you give when downloading (which you should do now while it's still available).