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Microsoft Admonished by U.S. District Court Judge
An anonymous reader writes "The Seattle Times reports that the judge in the z4 'product activation' patent infringement case has increased the jury's original $115 million verdict against Microsoft by $25 million. Both Microsoft and Autodesk (another defendant) were admonished by the judge for misconduct. The judge wrote 'The Court concludes that Defendants attempted to bury the relevant 107 exhibits ... in a massive pile of decoys' and called one failure to disclose evidence 'an intentional attempt by Defendants to mislead z4 and this Court.'"
Even if MS gets burnt by them doesn't make them good.
Plus "product activation" must have been reinvented a million times or something.
That said MS deserves to get smacked if they try to mess about with the courts.
I'm sure with for a few extra bucks MS can buy whatever legal resources (including judges, prosecutors, congressmen, lobbyists) it needs to make it all better. Ain't it great living in a society where money rules all....
"Money's like honey, my little sonny, and a rich man's joke is always funny"
I agree, why is everyone against software patents except when the judgement is against Microsoft?
So a large corporation has ripped off a small company's software, which was specifically designed to stop people ripping off software. Somehow I doubt individuals sharing software is as big a threat as corporations cloning it.
We see that MS (and they are not alone in this) regard the law as something to be circumvented, something to play games with. Law is not absolute to them -- any risk of punishment is exactly that -- a possible risk to be weighed against the potential returns of a strategy or action.
Props to the judge for calling MS on its shenanigans; jeers for the penalty being insignificant to them.
These actions by MS are indicative of the collapse of the rule of law in the US. Without meaningful punishments for attempting to circumvent the laws and/or undermine the legal process, it will not change. $25MM is hardly a disincentive for MS.
IMO, the lawyers who used the obfuscatory tactic should be disbarred... and personally fined for contempt of court. And the executive(s) who authorized the tactic (or were responsible for the law team) should also be personally fined. And production of MS products should be halted until they can prove they are not still abusing the patent (by providing their code, in entirety, for review by the justice system, with any relevant sections clearly denoted).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I agree, why is everyone against software patents except when the judgement is against Microsoft?
Because anything, at all, that hurts Microsoft is good for the rest of the industry. Period.
Look, I despise software patents; I think they're one of the worst hindrances to technological progress ever devised in modern times.* But one of the main reasons these bullshit patents are so prevalent is because the 900 lb. gorillas of the industry always have thousands of them, and aren't shy about using them to threaten competitors. If the largest and strongest of those gorillas (the 1000 lb. gorilla, let's say, which is currently Microsoft) can be forced on occasion to, um, slim down a little, that makes things just the teeniest bit easier for the rest of us. And it brings us closer to a truly competitive marketplace in which, just maybe, we'll see the conditions for the growth of a significant lobby, made up of companies that have suffered from the absurdity of the current patent laws, to try to do away with the stupid things entirely.
*Qualifier added because software patents, as onerous as they are, don't compare to, say, burning people at the stake. It's important to keep things in perspective.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Software Patents should never have existed in the first place.
They're basically patenting logic and Math equations.
All it's doing is making patent law more profitable.
Imagine how many lawyer would be out of work without Software Patents.
Software Patents = Welfare for Lawyers
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Now that the z4 case is wrapped up, can we get that judge to take over the blatantly abusive SCO vs IBM case, and wind it up this weekend?
--
make install -not war
No, it isn't. There's not a single activated product I can think of that hasn't been cracked and made freely available to software pirates.
Where activation has been extremely successful is in forcing honest customers to buy the same product over and over again as their hardware fails or is replaced. That's its real function - to artificially obsolete software so developers can get more money for less effort.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Please, you act as if that money would not have existed if Billy hadn't of pulled it out of his ass. If Microsoft had never of existed, others would have stepped in. Perhaps there could have been real competition and we would all be better off. Perhaps we would all be just a little richer, with software that works better, if this man had never built his little empire on theft, coercion and deceit. So now that he's essentially stolen so much money that it doesn't matter how much he gives away, we're supposed to respect him for giving some to charity? When he never should have had that much to begin with? You know, Mafia dons occassionally give money to charity too.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I think you are failing to see the problem here. We are talking about Microsoft's patchy business ethics; not about Bill's admirable charity work. These are two completely different subjects. I think the biggest problem most people have with Microsoft is the company's lack of innovation set against the background of its more than ample resources. We are talking about the world's leading software developer with a multi-billion budget. And the crap it produces.
It's critical that no one person in a company ever appears to be above a code of ethics.
You're both misreading it. The rule stipulates that a company may not have one person acting unethically; there are no restrictions on several people doing so.
In sum, Davis wrote that the court was "greatly disturbed by the repeated instances where Defendants actions go beyond what can be dismissed as a mere appearance of impropriety and collectively appear to represent a pattern which is of disappointment to the Court and a disservice to legitimate advocacy."
Oddly enough, MS and others probably do this all of the time. This judge threw the flag while others assume that type of conduct is business as usual, no big deal. In the appeals process, MS will eventually find an old school judge that accepts this practice as normal and will not raise the issue and as almost always appears to happen, the one with the bigger pocket and connections will win.
Grow up. (1) Naturalistic fallacy. Just ebcause something is a certain way does not mean it should or must be that way. (2)I agree. So? (3)Straw Man. I'm not saying anyone is a saint. Some people are better than others. (4) If you were good at debate, you'd be a master debater.
Gates would never have been in a position to do good if he hadn't done evil to get there. If he didn't do that evil, others would have prospered and perhaps contributed more than Gates ever could. We'll never know.
In terms of percentage of income given to charity, I spent over four years of my life working exclusively for charity, 100%. No income, lived on savings. So you can take your straw man, shove him where the sun don't shine and light him on fire for all the good he's doing you in winning points in this debate.
This last bit is just nonsensical, a complete non-sequiter. Was it just an excuse to quote Godel? It barely even qualifies as a straw man. Here's what Godel would say: "Yes, Bill Gates proves my point about how easy it is to become a dictator in America." I'm an anarchist, my friend, and not one of those libertarian types, either. So I speak of the free market and competition not as some end-all, be-all, greatest system in the world, but as the system of rules we all have to fucking play by.
So far, you've done a piss poor job of convincing me that I should be licking Bill Gates twat, and you have exhibited substandard reading comprehension skills. Either that or you are deliberately not understanding my point in order to better convince the feeble minded of your own. So let me try again.
Bill Gates got rich by fucking over the world. Had he not done so, we would likely all be better off. So there would be more money spread amongst more hands, possibly leading to even greater relief of suffering. There would be less poverty, less people in need of his fucking charity. More people, giving more money, to less needy people. So it's not very insightful to just look at Billy's charity and say, "ooh, look at all the good he's done." The question is, does it outweigh the bad? I say no, it doesn't.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Thats bullshit. You either stand by a principle or you dont. Thats like saying its ok to undermine civil liberties as long as we're "fighting terrorism."
This principle is also known as two wrongs not making a right.