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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.'"
I think Microsoft needs to read their own Put it in writing: Your business has ethics - particularly point 8:
You ever read that Steve or Bill?
Mind you - I'm not exactly on z4's 'side' here - I don't like software patents (and it doesn't look like z4 have a product, but rather are an 'IP' company). That said however, live by the sword, die by the sword hey MS? Want to enforce your FAT patents? Expect more of this sort of shit in the future.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
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 bet they can.
No sig for now.
"judge wrote 'The Court concludes that Defendants attempted to bury the relevant 107 exhibits ... in a massive pile of decoys'
I see that Microsoft is still retaining Elmer F.U.D. for his legal services.
Where were you when the voynix came?
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?
He cited several examples in which the defendants failed to fully and promptly disclose evidence, calling one instance "an intentional attempt by Defendants to mislead z4 and this Court."
Ok, so if this is an actionable item - why hasn't SCO been nailed with something similar? They've been doing the smoke and mirrors thing for years now.
What gives? Why can a judge nail MS with this, but not SCO?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
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
You mised the part of the patent application that specified "on the internet." That makes it both unique and non-obvious, because doing anything on the internet is completely different than doing it off the internet. Hasn't /. taught you anything about the USPTO this past decade? ;-)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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."
Not just Microsoft, but all large companies with enough money to actually change the patent system. See, here in the USA our crooked politicians only bow down to one master. The mighty US dollar (or not so mighty). Mega-corps have enough money to bribe politicians to actually get laws made and/or changed.
I personally hope to see tons of software patent suits against Microsoft and other big corps with a lot of software patents. If these big corps pay out enough money, they might just send some money to our crooked politicians to buy some laws.
The only negative to my "theory" is that I wouldn't put it past the mega-corps to try to "reform" software patents by making software patents available to big corps, but make it real hard for small/medium companies to get them.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
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.
In federal court, each side submits a pretrial statement to the court listing, among other things, the exhibits they intend to introduce at trial. Most of the time, the parties stipulate to the admissibility of most exhibits, or at least to the authenticity of the document exhibits in order to streamline the proceedings. These things are generally not in dispute and the court leans pretty heavy on the parties to enter into these stipulations unless there is a genuine dispute. Absent a stipulation, you must call a witness to lay the foundation for each document entered in evidence.
MS is always causing problems. How is it possible that a "small" company (in comparison to MS) like Apple is able to produce an incredible operating system and entire suites of applications for home, work, and pro, and it is incredibly stable, while MS, with significantly more resources and market share, and a more powerful position in the industry, cannot make something half as good?
As for the patent it is of course totally uninventive, obvious, there is prior art and any skilled person would have come up the the same thing without reading the method.
When are they going to fix that crock known as the US patent system?
davecb5620@gmail.com
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
I lived on the streets in San Francisco, not my parents basement you condescending fuckwit. I volunteered with Food Not Bombs, Earth First, and the IWW five days a week. You can shove your cookie up your ass. I've made a difference, what have you done you pathetic sack of shit?
You still haven't made a cogent point. You have fuck all for karma here and no friends. We are from roughly the same era, yet I have excellent karma and hundreds of friends. Not that that means anything definite, but it's interesting.
I'm done, debating with you has been a pointless waste of words. Have fun smooching Billy's ass.
- 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.