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Microsoft Sued Over Patent Infringements
Foobar of Borg writes "The Associated Press is reporting that Microsoft is being sued over alleged infringement of three patents held by Visto Corporation. The patents in question relate to the handling of information between servers and handheld telcom devices.
Jack Evans, a Microsoft spokesman, has not commented on the case itself, but has simply stated that 'Microsoft stands behind its products and respects intellectual property rights.'"
According to what I read YESTERDAY (but the story was rejected on /.) Microsoft seems to be being targeted in a preemptive way. In order to protect its IP, Visto is asking that MS Mobile 5.0 simply be prevented from being bundled with other MS products. They apparently have IP to back this up, and I hope that Visto manages to hold their own, whether that is toe-to-toe until out of court settlements are made, or in just filibustering their way to leadership position on mobile email. By keeping Microsoft out of the game (so to speak) that leaves room for other options. One thing I know for certain, Microsoft will never be kind to a F/OSS option in terms of IP licensing... perhaps Visto will.
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I read this the other day and posted on a comment on the story about NTP signing a patent licensing deal. The small company involved was Visto and Visto has several patents (25 total). It is quite possible the two companies are cross-licensing, but NTP may not have any patents worth sharing when the re-examination process at the PTO is complete.
Basically, Visto and NTP announced their deal Wednesday, the same day Visto filed suit against Microsoft. It also appears that NTP acquired a stake in the company as well, so they seem to have an invested interest in this case now as well. For those who have been hiding for the last while, NTP is the company who has become famous (or infamous) from their suit against RIM.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
There are these things called "Patent Libraries" that contain (now follow me here, it gets tricky) "patent information"...
You are oversimplifying. First, there can be patents filed but not yet issued -- you don't have access to them until the issue. Second, doing a "real" patent search is an expensive proposition (I'm not talking about your boss doing a 2 minute google search on a few key phrases). No company can do that type of search on every little thing that comes along.
Regarding submarine patents, I believe there have been changes made to the law to address this problem. Apparently the way submarine patents worked was the filer would stall the patent before it issued -- sometimes for many years. Then, once another company (with money) was clearly infringing they would push ahead to get the patent issued. There was no time limit on how long they could stall the process, and since the date of the original filing was the date used to decide first invention, the second company got "torpedoed" with no way of protecting themselves. The law change, as I understand it, is to now give the filer protection for 20 years from the date of filing, rather than 17 years from the date of issue.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Submarine patents were worse than that. They'd file, then they were able to change the patent before it was issued.
So...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_app lication