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MS Indemnifies Customers Against IP Threats
bigtallmofo writes "Microsoft announced today that it will indemnify nearly all its customers against claims that their use of Microsoft software infringed on any intellectual property rights. The only exception will be for embedded versions of Windows, since vendors are able to modify the source code. Is Microsoft opening itself to defending thousands of lawsuits against their customers?"
One thing that occurs to me, not that I harbor an ill will against Microsoft , is that this could be the call to arms of MS gettingready to start trying to collect/stifle with their patent suite. After all, just last week(?), MS pointed out that they feel they have all sorts of rights regarding myriad open protocols. Perhaps this is just to make their customers feel safe, considering what they may be about to try with Linux customers? Thank heavens that IBM can fight this one toe-to-toe.
Henry Ford did something similar to this in the early 20th century. Other automobile manufacturers claimed to have a patent or some such nonsense on what a car is. They didn't like Ford and wouldn't "license" the idea to him, and threatened to sue anyone who bought a car from Ford. Ford insured his customers against any lawsuit brought against them by the other car manufacturers. It was a huge coup for his business and Ford eventually won out his lawsuit against the other manufacturers.
Founder, Americans Allied Against Alliteration
I think they admit that the FTP program and sockets libraries are from BSD. When it makes better software, I'm all for Microsoft taking standard code. Imagine the nightmare that would have happened if they reinvented TCP/IP because they couldn't grab the BSD sockets code!
What about TimeLine suing MSSQL users?
There's a company called Acacia that's suing lots of .edu for streaming media patent infringements. Looks like MS has offered a pretty big shield for .edu here - so long as you stream using MS tech, they'll protect you.
That'll be a blow for Acacia - their business plan relies on suing individual institutions in a 'divide and conquor' manner and persuading others to license the right to stream media for a pretty substantial fee. They won't want to take on MS.
-EvilMagnus
If a company doesn't have an airtight case, they're not going to go up against someone who is going to be defended by Microsoft. So anyone who gets sued will be doing MS a favor, because it's an easy way for MS to find companies with good IP that they can then buy (or crush and then buy), then turn around and sue other software companies for violating their newly acquired IP. It's freaking brilliant if you ask me. Brilliantly evil, but brilliant nonetheless.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
this is about something much bigger:
"the company plans to make indemnity a new plank in its "get the facts" campaign, which touts the advantages of windows over linux."
IOW, it's benefitting from SCO's FUD. of course, at some point, SCO will run out of gas, these IP cases go away, but for those M$-thralls whose contracts renew, that resolution will probably come too late.
Gee, I guess you never heard of SCO.
For once, MS is doing a good thing, Though I'm sure they will spin it to their advantage, this is one of the actual advantages of commercial software to users of such. Since vendor is making money off of the software, they can afford to take the risk of patent infringement.
All commercial software vendors should do this.
And yes, MS products have been affected by this before. MS gets sued over patent infringement regularly, and some of the IP holders have threatened to go after individual users.
As we always do: By continuing to write and release useful software. Companies which are scared off can just go ahead and tie themselves (and an increasing portion of their profit margins) to Microsoft. Smarter organizations will benefit from what is freely available, and will prosper in the long-term. Microsoft will adapt or die.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
MS has been hit by some big IP suits lately, the Eolas plug-in horseshit, and now Novell is going to start a bunch of shit because apparently they patented "word processors" when they bought up WP.
The difference is, MSFT is losing them. Linux is a piece of source code, not a company that can be sued.
In corporate minds, MSFT is the one on the hotplate, and linux is the "safe" looking choice. SCO really doesn't have much street cred, at least according to the folks I've talked to.
This is MS trying to preempt or at least slow down a migration towards linux, IMO.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
No it doesn't say any of those things. In fact all it really says is this:
If Microsoft infringes on someone's IP, it is Microsoft that is liable, not their customers.
That was true regardless of whether they made the statement or not. The only purpose of this announcement is to create doubt that other software may have this liability, but MS software definately doesn't.
In particular they want you to think that open source software does have a potential for liability. Don't get me wrong - simply using a peice of software does not infringe on any IP rights, regardless of whether it is open source or not. However open source software lets you redistribute and modify it. If you redistribute software which infringes someone's copyright you might have some liability. In reality I'm pretty sure that the person who originally redistributed the software under an open source licence would be at fault for illegally sublicencing a copywritten work, and the people who redistributed the software later under the open source license would not be liable.
But basically this is just an empty statement that Microsoft is making to help prop up it's FUD campain.
America is bricking itself off. Now every idea will have to be bought and paid for. The barriers to entry will be such that what created America will cease to exist.
Since any idea can be found to originate with the words used to express it, that will mean the slow strangulation of original thought; just because you'll have to pay God knows who, probably some lawyer who's acquired a bunch of patents, God know how much, every time the light bulb goes off in your head. (The imagery owes something to Edison.)
It won't take too long before you stop attempting to act and then to even think.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
What you're saying is true about copyrights, but not about patents. Simply using a patented process is illegal, it doesn't matter if someone else gave you the software or you wrote it yourself.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
They want to do it because:
a) they have a patent warchest to make cross-license deals which don't cost them a dime and let their products off the hook.
b) they have a $30bn warchest for those that can't be threatened into a cross-license
c) Linux, OpenOffice, Apache and other free projects don't have these advantages.
They're trying to increase the cost of doing business for all programmers by saying "here's a money source, do you have a patent we can license?".
I don't understand your logic here unless you are yourself falling hook, line and sinker for Microsoft FUD.
If you use a piece of Open Source software - actually, let's be more specific, GPL software - you get the right to use and modify that code as you wish, as long as your modifications fall under the GPL also.
If those modifications include code that comes under someone else's IP then, yes, you'd probably get sued for it.
However, how can you be sued for just using software that you believe to be under the GPL? If you did not modify that software such that it infringed someone else's IP rights, how can you be liable for it?
I don't understand what indemnification you, the end user, need for using a product you were told does not conflict with someone else's IP?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
"We will indemnify customers against time lost due to exploits found in our own code."
That would be *huge* coming from almost *any* software developer - even the GPL specifically disclaims any warranties concerning fitness for purpose. You generally only get that sort of thing with very expensive bespoke software.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
This is just FUD, I think.
Intellectual property falls into the following general areas. Infringement is completely different for each area:
sigs, as if you care.
If this is Microsoft's strategy against open source, then I would say that are going to lose this battle.
With this decision, Microsoft is making it clear that one of their main strategies against the onslaught of open source is to spread fear of lawsuits. They are setting themselves up to have the "better story" when it comes to the indemnification question.
This makes the arms-length support of SCO (by licensing its "IP") make more sense. The more Microsoft can do to fund linux related lawsuits, especially those against end-users, the more effectively it can use fear to sell software.
This may work for some time with very large accounts, but this strategy is a loser in the long run.
People will view this whole indemnification business with a cynicism that will only grow with Linux's market share.
Maybe not form MS, but you can get that. Companies, specifically those that make mainframes, will gaurentee esentially 0 downtime. Problem is you do it in their terms. You run only on the hardware they tell you, and you don't modify it. You want an upgrade? Fine, you pay one of their people to come do it. You also run only the software the allow. Each package must be tested and certified to work with the OS and all other packages. You then can't load anything else without their approval. Finally, you can only use it as approved by them. You can't have people hacking at it and sending it bad data, it needs to be protected and only used as intended.
The problem is people seem to want that big iron stability from comoddity stuff. Nope, sorry. When you run on cheap hardware from multiple vendors, with a whole slew of software in a hostile environment, nobody will gaurentee their shit against downtime because nobody can make the gaurentee.
Linux is not immune, if you tried to gaurentee a given distro was safe for 0 downtime due to code flaws, you'd get burned since they aren't. Exploits ARE found. Even in software that's very good (like Apache) they come up every now and again, and when one does, you are screwed.
You just have to make a choice between openess (meaning ability to choose your own) of hardware and software and rock solid relibility. You can't be allowed to roll your own solution and expect a gaurentee of relibility. Now this doesn't mean that comoddity solutions can't be made to be very reliable, some are, just means no company will gaurentee it.
There's also tradeoffs in hardware and software design. The IBM z architecture and zOS are, when you get down to it, pretty damn slow by today's standards. When you factor in what they cost, they are obscenely slow in everything except IO. Why is this the case? Well, because they trade speed for relibility in basically all cases. If there is a way to make something more reliable, at the cost of some speed, it's done. That's the idea, you can put a z series mainframe in place and it'll just never go down on you.
A real microkernel would be one things along those lines. Basically EVERYTHING, even video drivers, file systems, etc runs in user mode. They all then talk to a very simple kernel that passes messages back and forth. The advantage is since the kernel is so simple, it can be tested very thourgly, and it can control for any problems, it can make sure all messages passed are properly formatted. However, this is very slow. You have real trouble with high performance video under such a system.
The software world seems to think that, if I use Windows, and it turns out Microsoft stole code, I am personally liable.
Maybe I missed a (hairbrained?) ruling somewhere that changed the precedent, but wouldn't it seem that I'm safe from lawsuits anyway over Microsoft's code theft?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
If you purchased a mass-market product that infringes on a third-party's patents (like Kodak's instant camera a few years ago), the manufacturere that made the device (Kodak) is liable for infringement to the owner of the patent or patents (Polaroid) and technically so are you.
The patent owner can sue the manufacturer for infringement and they can sue any user of the item that incorporates an infringement of a patent. In theory they could sue you but as most end-users are simply innocent infringers (and have little or no assets) as well as it being bad public relations and too expensive to bother, they typically do not.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
It should be noted that other database vendors such as Oracle, who licensed the same technology from Timeline Inc, did not choose the same license restriction, but choose a license that allowed all end users to use the API freely.
Excellent post, this is a perfect example of the amorality of corporations. They do not care about what is "right" and what is "wrong" or even figuring out where in the scale of gray one of their actions might fall. All they care about is profit. I may sound like an anti-capitalist zealot, but the fact is corporations are bound by law to consider NOTHING except shareholder profit when making business decisions. If a company makes a decision based on a different factor and the share price goes down as a result, then the company and the individuals running it stand to lose a lot of money from any shareholder lawsuits.
No, no, no -- you have it all wrong! What you should do is indemnify all the individual users and OEMs against your software: Seems the poor bastards are getting creamed in many numerous and expensive ways because of your crappy products. True justice would see a world-wide class action suit you (Microsoft) to cover all the loses individuals and businesses have suffered because of your slopware.
The EULA? Can a person on the street walk up to another and say, "I'm not responsible for my actions!" and do whatever they like to the other and suffer no consequences? No, and neither is your EULA a license to act irresponsibly by saying up front, "We're not responsible for our products."
Funny that the very marketing department which has made you, Microsoft, so successful is the noose around your collective necks: Microsoft marketing says, "Hey, buy our products, they are the best!" whilst the EULA says, "We're not responsible for our products!" whilst the customer says, "Hey, I'm getting screwed here because of this lousy product!"
What do you call sky-high promises before the money changes hands followed by complete avoidance of responsibility when the promises turn out to be misleading _after_ the money changes hands? I think the legal term is fraud.
*Waves to packs of hungry lawyers, points to Redmond* Sic 'em! There's gold in them thar shills!
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!