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Burst.com and Microsoft Settle
prostoalex writes "Microsoft and Burst.com announced a tentative settlement, where Microsoft will pay Californian company $60 mln for allegedly stolen multimedia streaming software. Robert X. Cringely provided the recap of the court case back in 2003 (and Slashdot discussion ensued). According to Burst claims, Microsoft entered a non-disclosure agreement with the company to learn about Burst's multimedia streaming technology. Later the technology, for which Burst has 37 patents, has been found in Windows Media Player. When aksed to present the archives of the e-mails and all communications within the company for the trial, Microsoft somehow presented all the documents that preceded before the deal and the documents that followed it. The e-mails during the 35 weeks that negotiations were held mysteriously disappeared. In court Microsoft claimed the e-mails were erased from employee's desktops, e-mail servers and server backups. The technology was not interesting to Microsoft, lawyers insisted, so the electronic trail of communications was erased."
The reason they couldn't find the e-mails is that they didn't "aks" the right question.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
Destroying evidence that you are supposed to hand over during discovery looks extremely bad to judges and lawyers.
C'mon people, RTFA!
According to the article, Microsoft will pay $60 million to Burst.com and will enter into a non-exclusive license agreement as part of tentative lawsuit settlement deal.
This means that Microsoft will pay now and continue to pay in the future.
Entering into a license agreement also means that Microsoft has acknowledged that Burst holds the IP on (at least part of) the disputed technology.
The only thing that's missing here is for Microsoft to admit that their behaviour during the trial (regarding the e-mails) was either criminally stupid or just plain criminal. And we all know that MS would never make such an admission.
Without seeing the details of the settlement, it seems to me like Burst may have gotten what they were asking for.
This story almost worked, but then Burst's lawyers remembered that during the SUN/MSFT trial, Microsoft testified that ALL company email was backed up off site. So the judge ordered Microsoft to search the backups for the missing emails.
Skip ahead half a year, and Microsoft claims in sworn testimony that they can't search the backups, because each company employee can choose which backup server they wish to archive on, and the company doesn't keep a master list of who's emails are on which server.
Burst's lawyers then start subpoening the backup site employees, and get testimony from the woman in charge of email backups. Her name is Candy Stark. Candy's testimony was "Oh yeah, of course we've got a master spreadsheet that matches employees to servers. How else could we search the backups? Here it is right here."
This past Thursday was when the hearing was to take place that would seal the fate of the Microsoft executives who'd given false testimony about said backup list. It was also probably going to result in the judge ordering Microsoft's backup servers seized by the court and searched by a third party. Not surprisingly, Microsoft settled 1/2 hour before that hearing was to start. Surprisingly, and unfortunately for BRST shareholders like me, the amount they paid to settle was a pittance.
If you'd like to really dig into all the dirty detail of this lawsuit, go dig into the posts at Yahoo's BRST message board, or check out burstinvestors.com which is a site set up by one of the longtime BRST shareholders.