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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."
From TFA... "Since the jury verdict last year, Microsoft has altered Office, alerting businesses back in January that they will need to upgrade to the modified version."
Why should USERS pay to upgrade to a new version? Why can't Microsoft license the patent in question, instead?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
a)This case has nothing to do with Vista. The patent is related to with some sort of communication between Access and Excel (sounds kinda bunk to me)
b)I don't think that a $65 million lawsuit (and this isn't even necessarily for that much) would make a decent significant enough in Microsoft to cause the resignation of Bill Gates...
Its not quite that bad, but yes, stalling the case for a year has gained them much more revenue in the country than the 65M fine. Its just consider a 'cost of doing business'.
We have a radio station in town that was similar. They would regularly violate FCC broadcast power and obscenity rules. However, the extra distance ( power ) and listeners ( obscenity ) far outweighed the fines they incurred and just made jokes about it ( on air even ). The process continued for years until they were top dog in that market and didnt need to do it anymore.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You're quite correct, I guess it does seem a bit arbitary sometimes. Considering the facts in this one, I do still agree it is a good decision. If the patent system was reformed properly, it would be easier to make decisions about what is 'good' and what is 'bad'.
To use your analogy, if Creative did create something and Apple decided against using it (licence too high, etc), but then had a change of heart and used it without paying Creative for a licence, then Apple would (imho) be in the wrong.
Now if Creative patented something and then sat on their hands not using it, whilst stopping others from using it, then we have a problem.
Patents are messy, but I do think we have to judge things on a case-by-case basis.
I've skimmed through the vast extent of it and some points arise:
- it should never have got accepted in the first place, its a piece of software, written as patent
- it references Microsoft FoxPro as something it works within, which both dates it and calls into question the Access/Excel claims
- its a mess of AI, Genetic algorothms, decision support, data mining and virtually every other buzzphrase in the known universe
- it describes a level of intelligent action on input data such as I've never seen in a Microsoft application
If this is really the PoS that $65m is built on, I'm in the wrong game.There are a number of inescapable flaws in the software patent 'system'; this is one of them...
1. Owning patents does not protect you from a non-producing entity (NPE, a firm that owns patents but makes nothing, so infringes nothing and cannot be sued).
2. It is impossible to define new software standards that cannot be undercut and held hostage by NPEs.
3. It is impossible to build new software products that cannot be undercut and held hostage by NPEs.
4. It is impossible to define software patents that cannot be undercut by other software patents. I.e. if Microsoft had filed and owned this particular patent, it'd not stop an NPE making another claim that undercut this claim.
The irony (sweet or not) is that it is those firms lobbying hardest for wider and stronger software patents (IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, Siemens, SAP) which end up paying the biggest bills. It's true that software patents provide temporary and lucrative monopolies - see the GSM market, based on some of the heaviest-patented standards ever - but in the end the patent trolls will always find a way to turn it around.
Sadly large IT firms are deeply schizophrenic about software patents, with patent policy firmly in the hands of the lawyers, not the engineers, and it will take more than a few lawsuits to change this. (A lawsuit that does not kill a firm just makes its lawyers stronger.)
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"I would be happy with an honest apology and handshake, that was earnestly meant."
Good luck with that. When has Microsoft *ever* made a public apology for anything? (not a troll -- honest question)
indeed, but then when has any large company ever apologized for their behaviour? Check this out for the greatest apology from a multi-national - that never happened.
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The reason that I don't cry when Microsoft loses a patent case is because Microsoft is one of the prime movers behind expanding America's broken patent system around the world. Besides, in recent years Microsoft has become very aggressive in its efforts to use its patents to generate huge amounts of licensing fees. In essence Microsoft wants to create a world in which large corporations, with large portfolios of patents to trade, are the only folks that can write software. Heck, Microsoft's most effective tool agains the encroachment of Free Software on its market has been to talk about "intellectual property" issues. When push comes to shove what Microsoft is really threatening is to use its patents against Free Software.
Microsoft is big enough and influential enough that if it got serious it could end the current patent madness almost single handedly. As long as Microsoft is part of the problem and not part of the solution then I sincerely hope that they reap the whirlwind they have sown. Not that it really matters what I think. Microsoft has billions of dollars in the bank and writes piles and piles of software. They are an ideal target for patent trolls. I'm sure that it has already occured to the bright people at Microsoft that its patent offensive has largely backfired. Microsoft is currently embroiled in over 30 patent lawsuits, many of which it has already lost. Free Software, on the other hand, continues to advance.
Let me get this straight: the guy patented a method of using the MS APIs to move data between two of their own products? So...basically, he used another companies intellectual property to create his own intellectual property of a feature they were probably going to add themselves later? This ranks up there with patenting business ideas. If Apple had been on the losing end, this place would be filled with outrage at the patent system (ie, the Creative suit).
So, near the point where the system achieves total statis, somebody is sued off the planet for trying to publish a text editor, and you have an Information Age equivalent of the French Revolution.
"They have no Operating System? Let them use Emacs."
-- R. Marie Stallmanette, shortly before dropping a significant percentage of her height.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear