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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.'"
TFA: "Microsoft stands behind its products and respects intellectual property rights." Well they do, im sure. Right until they buy the company. "Heres , keep the change. All your IP are belong to us."
"Sarcasm is for *winners*, Alan." - Charlie Harper (Two and a Half Men)
I just don't get how this is meant to work. I don't blame Microsoft here, how are they to know an idea they comeup with has has already been patented? Or is this just the way modern business is going - money is made my sueing other people. I rarely stand behind MS, but i think this is all getting a bit silly now.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
'Microsoft stands behind its products and respects intellectual property rights.'
Correction: this sentence lacks the second "its" (just after "respects").
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Somehow I have a feeling Visto is just trying to "cash in" their patents by making out-of-court agreements to settle the deal.
The small guys try to get rich with patents suing the big guys, so the big guys get further patents to protect themselves.
The system is fucked.
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They thought they were going to pull a fast one on all of us Visto customers by calling their new product Vista. Microsoft must have figured if you cant beat the bootlegers, join them.
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Nothing like a little pressure from industry giants to speed up much needed reform of the patent system.
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I remember a time -- I think it was around the release of Windows 95 -- when the dream of every little startup was to get bought by Microsoft.
Now, they have strangled the competition so much that the dream of many little startups is to fold, hold onto their 'Intellectual Property' for a while, then sue the heck out of Microsoft.
Which, by the way, is not a bad strategy at all, since Bill Gates & Co. have billions and billions of dollars in the bank and are very willing to buy their way out of legal troubles (monopoly problems with DoJ and all that).
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
psst wrong article that was previous one here
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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...die by the sword.
Now we know the real reason why NTP acquired a stake in Visto yesterday.
Neither NTP nor Visto have contributed anything of importance to mobile E-mail technology; they have simply taken out patents on some of the obvious and trivial ways in which devices can get notified of server updates.
Visto's argument that it is good to beat Microsoft with patents because of Microsoft's monopolistic practices is wrong. It is true that Microsoft is behaving monopolistically with Exchange and Windows Mobile, but that's an issue for regulators and the market to worry about. Allowing Visto's and NTP's bogus patents to stand only replaces a big monopolist with a little one.
Remember that this is the company that copied Stac Electronics' disk compression software, infringed on their patents, and lost the resulting lawsuit. The whole debacle ended up costing Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars.
It seems the new craze for companies is that when they are struggling, just sue a successful company for patent infringement. Look at creative suing apple over the iPod... they didn't care until apple kicked their ass in the market. Look at RIM.
My point is that our corrupt politicians have allowed what should have been copyright law become patent law. Your code is a parallel to writing a book, not a parallel to creating the electric engine.
The irony is that big corporation like Microsoft have shot themselves in the foot here. They pushed for this type of patent law out of fear that their software would easily be duplicated, so It is funny to watch them get slapped by so many frivolous law suites.
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."
The only purpose of software patents is to cash in. Patents were originally there to prevent ideas theft because it was expensive to develop ideas and manufacturing a product was expensive. In the digital world, it costs nothing to refine an idea and a mere half an hour to develop all but the most advanced software that you are patenting. If it's an idea you have, it will have been patented, especially with things like scrollbars patented, and not forgetting the patent on the idea of a menu. They're used by everyone and there is always going to be patent action against people who use them. I would feel sympathy for microsoft for once, if it weren't for the fact they've been suing for software patent infringement on equally ridiculous things. The US patent office is a joke. One-click shopping should be unpatentable, and patenting an algorithm in the year 2002 that was implemented in the linux kernel since 1992 (i think that was the year?) really beggars belief (a method of detecting whether a 2 digit year was in the 20th or 21st century - checking if it was above 70). Patents were there to make people innovate more, but in software, they stifle innovation because there arent a thousand ways of doing things and when they're all patented (usually by one or two companies), you're a bit buggered as a software dev.
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I hope somewhere a bean counter is totting up two columns: "Revenues from patent litigation" and "Losses from patent litigation". Hopefully this will be roughly a zero-sum and will make people realise that everyone except patent lawyers loses from patent litigation.
Won't somebody please put a stop to these NTP vultures!
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Somehow big companies preffer to just deploy a fleet of lawyers, try to dodge the attack, and if not, just pays up and forgets about it.
I've more hopes for the RIM case making a change since lots of government people use those. We all know that government guys are all about respecting the law, except when it affects THEM in a negative fashion.
...Microsoft Intellectual Property Protection? Get the Facts.
Perhaps SCO can now fantasize about some obscure SCO IP protected code making its way into the Windows kernel. Oh the irony, Oh the sweet, sweet irony!
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
Microsoft have lost millions in patent fights, and have never ever used them to attack open source software.
O rly?
It seems that unless you have a patent lawyer founding a company, nobody will make any money. The case of NTP will pave the way for every lawyer in the land to stake a claim on a concept and squeeze the ligitimate inventor/investor who actually creates something, for their pound of flesh. Imagine how society would be better off if all of the smart people went to create real products instead of becoming a lawyer and launching a suit over an idea that they never brought to market.
Yes, perhaps microsoft will drop their support for software patents if they start biting them in the ass too much.
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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....
IANAPL but AFAIK...
The US has fixed its laws to match the rest of the world to stop this "aquatic" practice. Once a patent application is filed there is an 18-month period before the application automatically becomes public. It may still take some number of years, however, before the patent is granted.
"I'm going to Fucking BURY Visto Corporation! I've done it before, and I will do it again. I am going to FUCKING KILL Visto Corporation!"
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
NTP, the company that has so far successfully brought suit against RIM for its patents on "wireless messaging" (can you imagine a broader term?) bought an equity stake in Visto just days before this announcement. Sounds like a pretty lucrative business. More on my O'Reilly blog.
In the time it takes them to write the check... They will have made it all back.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Remember, these are the guys that just struck a deal with NTP about the RIM patents (the ones NTP is suing RIM about)... As part of the deal, didn't NTP get an equity stake in Visto? They're probably almost effectively partners... Perhaps this is all part of a master plan to go after Microsoft, using the $bin NTP is trying to extort from RIM? $1,000,000,000 will feed the lawyers for a good long while, especially if the payoff is almost certainly orders of magnitiudes more from Microsoft...
Canopy used to own 40% of scox, canopy bought dr-dos, used it to sue msft, then canopy threw dr-dos on the scrap heap. Arguably, canopy wanted to do the same thing with UNIX.
SCOX's flagship product, OpenServer, is built on Xenix - which used to be owned by msft.
Do they know about this?
On aside note, its Good to see lawyers have work during this Holiday season. I always worry about them during the cold months.
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Yes Im a hypocrite !
Hurray for the US Patent office!
We both know that RIM is right... But it looks like they'll have to cough up the cash, then NTP's patents will be invalidated... The judge seems to be intent to stick it to the Canadians... And on another level, he's probably trying to highlight that the patent and justice system is broken... I kind of hope that the patents are invalidated, then RIM counter-sues NTP and ends up owning them... Then Visto can be dismantled... Its funny that companies like NTP exist... Makes you wonder what the CEO says he does for a living when people ask him at family dinners... "So what do you do, anyway?" -> "Well, I hold ideas and sue people when they get the same ones... I didn't come up with them myself, they're not real because they're only ideas..."
Since all these commercial corporations are building their patent libraries, why doesn't the open source community do the same? Since OSS is not profit seeking, they won't litigate and they'd effectively keep corporations from being able to litigate over untangible abstractions that belong in the scientific domain anyway.
You can almost hear the voice of Nelson from The Simpsons right about now going "HA HA".
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
"A system or method of bringing a computer to its knees after an authorized user attempts to execute factory-installed software. Following lock-up, the user is presented with a blue screen which may contain meaningless technical jargon.
This patent includes a system in which, following lock-up, the user is presented with an animated hour glass.
This patent includes a system in which, following lock-up, the user is presented with a mouse pointer that won't move.
This patent includes a system in which, following lock-up, the user is presented with a mouse pointer that moves but won't click.
This patent includes a system in which, following lock-up, the user is presented with a mouse pointer that moves and clicks on buttons that don't respond."
Evil is the money of root.
Sure, they might buy out NTP. But once they pay out, the other Patent Lawyers will smell the blood in the water and start circling like the sharks that they are.
You'd better believe that a lot of people are going to be looking at the big giants with deep pockets if Microsoft gives these guys money. It's an INCREDIBLY easy way to make money.
And not even a company as large as Microsoft or IBM can stand up to a beowulf-cluster (pardon the term - it seems appropriate) of attack lawyers doing the same game that NTP is.
Clearly it can't last for long. The name of the game is right now is to milk the system for all its worth. Grab some popcorn and enjoy the sad show. In the meantime, this will have a negative effect on startups and new technology.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
Round up all these patent lawyers..
and throw them in a dungeon somewhere in Iraq....
"Microsoft stands behind its products and respects intellectual property rights."
Just not at the same time.
-- This void intentionally left null.
I've said it before, too...
Patents and Copyrights were a good idea that have been abused by companies. They were designed, as I understand it, to allow new ideas to come onto the market with some period where the originator could get established before the mega-corps could use their tech. (unless they compensated the patent/copyright holder). Then mega-corps decided to use them 'defensively' and evil ensued.
Both patents and copyrights need to be re-worked. I think one of the key concepts is that corporations should not be allowed to hold patents or copyrights... only individuals. Neither should be fund-able from corporate money, either. Also, litigation, etc. as a result of a patent shouldn't be allowed to be funded by corporations, either. I also think that licenses should be held only by individuals. So, the makers/license-holders of M$ Outlook could be sued for using someone's tech. without compensation, or permission. Importantly, realize that a 'company' doesn't mean that it's a corporation. Sole proprietorships should be allowed this device.
I was interested to learn that patents (and copyrights?) can be held on biological matter, too. I could patent you (prior 'art' not withstanding) and your children would likely be in violation of my patent. So, another key is deciding that certain things shouldn't be patentable. As well as naturally occuring biological material, I think that business processes, etc. should NOT be patentable.
I agree with 5.
3 seems like a step in absolutely the wrong direction (the intent being to give small companies and individuals a chance to establish themselves before the full weight of competition comes to bear).
I think that 2 is kinda funny. Legal-ese is a nod to the FACT that language is imprecise, at best. Ideas are difficult to express (art?) clearly, completely, and unambiguously. That's just a fact. Perhaps the patent office should demand an executive summary (a design doc) : ) Think of writing 'code' as a simile here. I write 'code' to tell the computer PRECISELY what to do... then I have to comment it.
If I get 4 correctly, then you are saying that a patent should be like a theory (with a reproducible experiment?), which can be disproven, but is considered a fact until such a time that it's proven wrong. Interesting approach. I kinda like it.
IMHO, I guess a judge (another case where specialized judges would be nice) or maybe a patent clerk would have to decide whether that patent and/or copyright should be considered disproven. Then it gets tricky... awarding damages to the REAL originator is tough, but possible.
That's a good post! You presented a possible solution (and didn't just bitch)!
I say everyone should sue the hell out of Microsoft. Make them annoyed enough, and maybe they'll buy some better laws^W^W^W^W lobby for patent reform as you describe.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt