Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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)
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.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
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.
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."
I said it yesterday, and I'll repeat it - the patent system (bureacracy) needs to be, not fixed, but neutered.
Bureacracies always reach out and try to take more power - once patents simply protected implementations - now the patent office is reaching out to get a stranglehold on stuff like "business methods" and algorithms (math) and essentially ideas - many of them common sense to the problem being solved.
Patents are for society, not the individual. It's supposed to push progress forward by opening non-obvious ideas for everyone for a limited time. Not MONOPOLIZE obvious ideas for the benefit of one person against the rest of society.
To fix patents, we don't need more patent clerks (federal employees), we need to:
1. Go back to old way patents were done - which includes working implementation upon application. Thus ideas become unpatentable. Same with business methods. It will also render 90% all the unreadable legalese to obscure what you are patenting obsolete.
2. Punish non-English application. No, I don't mean application in a foreign language, just the ones that read like they are. Plain english is a must. Jail time in Gitmo otherwise.
3. Raise price to apply for patent to $10,000-50,000 (refundable only on recieving a patent) - while it may seem to screw the "little guy" it actually will kill corporations trying to patent every little thing. Even a little operation will be able to afford to patent 1 WORTHWHILE application, but will corporate America still be able to afford to apply for 10's of thousands of trivial patents?
THE KEY
4. Part of application fee (say 1/2) will go as a bounty to anybody who can disprove it - in other words show prior art, etcetera. This could be anybody - college students, professors, employees of another company.
Why hire clueless clerks when you could flocks of knowleable people examining patents because of a profit motive to turn them down? They won't have the power to deny a patent, they bring the case against it.
5. No renewable patents. Lower patent length from 17 years to 9 years or so. Back in the 1700's, business and the pace of life overall was slower, let's reflect that.