Microsoft Loses Appeal in Guatemalan Patent Claim

Spy der Mann writes "A year ago, Guatemalan inventor Carlos Armando Amado sued Microsoft for stealing an Office idea he had tried to sell them in '92. They were found to be infringing on his patent and had to pay him $9 million in damages, but they refused and appealed the decision. Today, just a year after they appealed, the Court confirmed the verdict: Microsoft loses. If that wasn't enough, the amount was raised to $65 million for continuing infringement."

Comments

Good

[nbannerman]

Good. Good. Good.

This is how the patent system should work. A guy came up with an idea and tried to make his buck. MS stole the idea, which for all intents and purposes ruined his chances of making his money back. So, he sued them and got what he deserved. Eventually.

Of course, 14 years must be a hell of a long time to wait for your money...

I wonder if someone at MS is feeling just a bit stupid right now. Yeah yeah, £65mil is chump change to them, but they do leave with a substantial amount of egg on their face!

Re:Good

[thelost]

unfortunately they probably are not. yeah they drop 65m but often a large company like this will simply bulldoze through a smaller opponent, having the money and manpower to ignore niggles like this. After all this isn't going to appear on the front page of the newspapers tomorrow, so apart from the money the damage to MS is minimal. No one is going to put them on their knee and give their hide a good tanning, and that is what annoys me than anything. Money makes a poor substitute for apologies to me, even 65m of it. tag this post "idealistic" but I would be happy with an honest apology and handshake, that was earnestly meant.

Re:Good

[Halo1]

This is how the patent system should work. A guy came up with an idea and tried to make his buck.

Actually, this is independent of how the patent system should work. The only goal of the patent system should be to promote innovation. It is not there to "help the little guy get his share from large companies" any more than it is there to "help large companies crush little guys with their huge portfolios".

Only if the chance that other people would come up with this on their own is very small, and if the "original discoverer" would not publish it without getting a 20 year monopoly in return, and if the downsides of this 20 year monopoly don't outweigh the upsides of disclosure, then there could be a justification for granting the patent. On a macro-economic scale, this is not true for software patents.

In this particular case, it's about patent US 5,701,400. Let's have a look at claim 1, which as a whole consists of a single sentence of 506 words. Below, you can find a summary of the meat of that claim:

a program in execution by said computer for controlling operations thereof for receiving user input defining one or more analysis rules to be applied to user specified data from said memory,

We have a program with rules operating on data

each said analysis rule being a user defined arithmetic and/or logic test to be applied to user specified items of said data and for controlling said computer to receive and store user entered data defining the alphanumeric text of a diagnostic statement associated with each true result of each said analysis rule,

Each rule is a mathematical or logical expression returning true or false, and its outcomes are associated with text strings (i.e., if-statements with a string as result)

each said diagnostic statement comprised of a user defined alphanumeric text string which the user can program to define the significance of the true result, its relevance or any other expression which provides meaning to the user of the true result of the analysis rule, and for controlling said computer to receive user input controlling which of said analysis rules are to be applied to said data,

The user can specify the "then" and the "else" outcomes of these "if" statements.

and for applying said analysis rules so designated to the data designated by said user and returning a true or false result for each analysis rule so applied depending upon the state of the data to which each analysis rule was applied,

You can apply the if-statements to different inputs, and the output will depend on the input

and for each true result returned by an analysis rule, controlling said computer to store in a file in said memory the user programmed text of a diagnostic statement associated with each true result as a diagnostic in a diagnostic database,

Those earlier mentioned text strings are stored in memory once those if-statements are evaluated.

and for controlling said computer to receive and store in said memory user input defining one or more expert tests, each expert test comprising a user defined arithmetic and/or logic statement to be applied to one or more diagnostics selected by user input from the diagnostics stored in said diagnostic database, said arithmetic and/or logic statement comprised of mathematical operators and/or logical operators from any logic set such as predicate logic or Boolean logic including at least the AND, OR and NOT functions, each said expert test returning either a true or false result, and for controlling said computer to receive us

Re:Good

[moochfish]

To demonstrate just how arbitrary the patent system seems sometimes... let's replace a few words in your statement:

Good. Good. Good.

This is how the patent system should work. [Creative] came up with an idea and tried to make [their] buck. [Apple] stole the idea, which for all intents and purposes ruined [their] chances of making [their] money back. So, [they] sued [Apple]...

Of course, [4] years must be a hell of a long time to wait for your money...

You could do the same thing with Amazon's One-click patent and achieve similar results. Yeah... I am not saying the dude did or didn't deserve the money. I am just saying it all seems very arbitrary sometimes.

Re:Good

[Halo1]

Even if the patent were valid, the goal of the patent system is not "to enable small guys to gets lots of money from the big guys", even if said big guys are doing something the small guys thought of first. The fact that this patent itself is horse crap (although I have yet to see a software patent which isn't, to be honest) is just something which adds injury to the insult.

Re:Good

[Halo1]

That's a nice summary of the first of 12 claims. Claim 1 basically outlines the method of implementation and doesn't really contain much "novelty," but you can't really make the following 11 claims describing what the program does, unless you've said you have a program.

That's irrelevant. Claims 1 to 12 have all been granted, so each and every one of them defines a monopoly which has been granted to the applicant.

Subsequent claims describe an "expert system" for providing advice or automating decision-making. eg, Word's grammar-checker.

As the first claim explains, "expert system" is used here as synonym for "an if-test with multiple conditions". In this sense, pretty much every single useful program I've ever written contains multiple "expert systems".

It may still not be all that "novel," but it's an awful lot more specific than "a program that applies AND, OR and NOT logic to database results and stores them in memory"

Even though what you describe above is a monopoly on its own which has been granted, let's look at a couple more:

• claim 2: the data and the results of the if-tests are bi-directionally linked to each other.
• claim 3: the data, if-tests and results are stored in separate tables of relational databases and linked to each other
• claim 4: same as claim 1, except that you now also get a "weighing factor" in case the if-test returns true, and when combining multiple if's you also combine those weighing factors.
• claim 5: the user can define how the weighing factors should be combined
• claim 6: the user can only use some predefined functions to combine the weighing factors
• claim 7: the weighing factor is used to define confidence in the result, and how to combine confidences (AND = minimum, OR = maximum, NOT = inverse)
• claim 8-12: sorry, but I've wasted enough time on this nonsense

I still completely fail to see how this is "an awful lot more specific", novel or innovative than the first claim. Not to mention that everything which is supposed to be innovative is plain maths or logic.

They more than likely thought they would lose

[tenverras]

Sure, Microsoft would still much rather win, but I doubt they were kidding themselves into thinking that they weren't in the wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole reason they took it to court was to send the message that just because you think that Microsoft is infringing on your patents, doesn't mean they're going to roll over and pay you off. You better be ready to go the distance if you want to earn your dollar.

Re:They more than likely thought they would lose

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

If you read the article it looks like this guy wrote some sort of macro to import data. Does this deserve a patent?

Misleading summary

[kjart]

From the article:

Morrison & Foerster said it is hoping that the federal court will award Amado further damages for continuing infringement, out of an escrow account that now has more than $65 million in it.

The lawyers appear to be hoping for more, but it hasn't necessarily been increased to $65 million yet. Personally, I don't think it's worth that much, since the infringing technology is related to:

Microsoft's method of linking its Access database and Excel spreadsheet infringed on Amado's technology

but heck, that's patent law for you.

Re:Delicious marketing gimmick?!

[kjart]

Why should USERS pay to upgrade to a new version? Why can't Microsoft license the patent in question, instead?

I'd imagine that's referring to a patch and not something that costs money. Unless you're referring to the human cost of having to patch X copies of Office. Then again, I doubt that Microsoft cares if people actually upgrade - it's probably just important (for legal reasons I imagine) that they _ask_ people to.

Hang on a minute

[sane?]

This concerns a patent for a method of shifting data from Excel to Access. I thought we had all agreed that software patents were a bad idea? All of them.

This guy managed to take two packages made by Microsoft and work a way of shifting data between them. So what? I'll guess (given that no reference is given to the actual patent) that given the two packages there are only very few mechanisms, and these are obvious in the context of the software. I can quite understand Microsoft telling him to take a hike for an export/import routine.

As much as it may pain some, this person looks to be a chancer. Just because its the little guy and Microsoft doesn't make it right.

Re:Hang on a minute

[rolfwind]

In one way, I do agree with you. In another, I have to point out that it is MS that is helping push software patents in Europe, and thus, this is poetic justice. Perhaps they'll reconsider their position if this happens enough (though I doubt it).

Maybe, in the end, I wish they were getting their poetic justice without a patent troll getting paid off, though.

Re:Hang on a minute

[jkrise]

This concerns a patent for a method of shifting data from Excel to Access

There's no reference, but I'd wager NO PATENT would've been granted on these lines... more like, "a method to move data from a spreadsheet to a database".

This guy managed to take two packages made by Microsoft and work a way of shifting data between them.
No evidence to the above. Maybe more generic work.

I thought we had all agreed that software patents were a bad idea? All of them.

Agreed. And so, until software patents are declared illegal, any aggrieved party should be able to make the infringer pay.

Just because its the little guy and Microsoft doesn't make it right.

How about vice-versa? With WGA, Microsoft checks every small guy every day. Every day, every one is guilty unless a piece of software decides you are innocent. Two wrongs won't make a right.... and yet, the rights of little men MUST be upheld, until the SYSTEM becomes more equitable.

Re:Hang on a minute

[flight666]

Oh, yes it does make this right. Very right. You see, strategically, it would be best if the worlds most profitable software company were to lose a bunch of these suits and then decide that they dont like software patents very much. Then they could spend some of their money buying some patent reform laws.

Re:Hang on a minute

[Giometrix]

I wish you were only kidding...

Re:Hang on a minute

[kestasjk]

Or more likely they'll decide they have to get even more patents on trivial/obvious features to stop this happening again.

Re:Hang on a minute

[KiloByte]

If it is a patent that hurts Microsoft, then it is good and that is how patents are supposed to work.

The reason why we cheer for some patents, is that it's good to see patent trolls themselves get hurt. In fact, this is the only way to fight -- it is them who get to buy laws, and without them getting ever hurt, our side simply has no leverage to persuade anyone who has any power.

Re:Hang on a minute

[tehshen]

It's amazing how you can be automatically Insightful for bashing this place now. If someone's wrong about something, don't whine about some 'groupthink', try to correct whoever it was, which actually helps. Explain why this isn't how the patent system is supposed to work. Anyway here's my opinion on the matter.

I think of it like this:

• If I break into your house and steal all your money, that is bad and I should be punished for it.
• If I break into your house because you stole my computer and I want to get it back, I might be more justified in doing so.

Sure, it's a lot more complicated than that - in either case, I've got a charge of breaking and entering to deal with. Likewise, patents are going to be controvertial whatever happens.

I don't like Microsoft that much. I don't like their business practices, their software, or their vast army of lawyers and patents, and anything that hinders any of those things is good by me. Then again, I'm also against these software patents, and I'm not sure if this one should've even been granted, let alone used.

Using a patent against Microsoft is making the best of a bad situation. Obviously, I'd rather see them both without any patents, like I'd rather not have my thing stolen and have to break into your house to get it back. This is just the next best thing.

Good-"/." wisdom.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is how the patent system should work."

Really? According to slash-wisdom, he should have never been granted a patent, because...you know "all software patents are bad". And two "evil corporations" ALWAYS win. Good thing I guess no one believes anything they spout here.

No, it's really a win for Microsoft

[njdj]

Cost to Microsoft: Negligible. (Microsoft's net income was over $12 billion last year).

Cost to the inventor: 14 years of his life spent fighting a legal battle.

Message to anybody else whose work Microsoft steals: if you take us to court, figure on losing 14 years of your life fighting a legal battle, and by the way you'd better have a lot of money before you start, because Microsoft won't hesitate to spend a few tens of millions on the best legal talent available.

Powerful ally

[Gadzinka]

It's good to have such a powerful ally in fight against software patents.

After couple of court loses like this, I don't think there's anyone in MS who still believes that their huge patent portfolio will help them. It used to be that you simply amassed patents and when your competition sued you for patent infrigment, you sued them back, finally settled outside of court and signed mututal patent exchange with them.

Now, there are companies that don't do anything, just sue left and right, so you have no possibility to sue them back for patent infrigment[1]. You might even bankrupt them by prolonged court proceedings, but they are like hydra: those same people, will resurface in some other company and continue to extort money.

Robert

[1] unless you own a patent on a business method ,,don't do anything, just sue'' ;)

That is not a reasonable summary of the patent

[njdj]

If that were all that the patent said, Microsoft's team of top lawyers would have ripped it to shreds in seconds. The fact is that Claim 1 just describes a component, for which no originality is claimed. The essence of the patent is that it takes a bunch of things, none of which are novel, and combines them in a way which is claimed to be novel. The patent itself says "its individual elements respond to prior art in the following areas: decision-support software and executive information systems, expert systems and expert system building tools, ..." and it cites 7 examples of prior art just in the area of decision-support software.

The patent is bad because it is a software patent. But if software patents are allowed, then combining known elements in a new way qualifies for a patent, because there is over 100 years of precedent in awarding patents for just that in other fields.

Re:That is not a reasonable summary of the patent

[Ohreally_factor]

And then what happens? The outraged villagers kill the patent system with pitchforks and torches?

Have to side with Microsoft here

[Myria]

Ready to get -1 flamebait...

Nobody should get pushed around by stupid patents, and that includes your enemies. Don't side against someone simply because you don't like them. It's in your best interests to defend Microsoft here...

Melissa