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Microsoft Sued Over Patent Infringements

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the at-it-again dept.

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.'"

6 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Patents by pryonic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Patents by LaughingCoder · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.
  2. How things change... by Noryungi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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)
  3. what a bunch of sleazeballs by penguin-collective · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Visto and NTP by thebdj · · Score: 5, Informative

    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."
  5. Re:Visto's press release by rolfwind · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.