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Microsoft Sued over Xbox Live
fiorenza writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Paltalk has sued Microsoft in the Eastern District of Texas over its Xbox Live service. The suit alleges that Microsoft's Xbox Live infringes on two of its patents, and that the company has suffered damages 'in at least the tens of millions of dollars,' which raises obvious questions about why they waited four years to file the suit (Xbox Live was launched in late 2002)." From the article: "Microsoft, as a company that runs multiplayer game servers, is alleged to be violating these patents. It's not clear how they're doing so--the initial complaint provides literally no evidence of Microsoft's guilt. The filing instead describes the Paltalk patents and the dates that Xbox Live went, err, live. After five pages of this, Paltalk simply claims that "gameplay on the Xbox or Xbox 360 through the Xbox Live online gaming service infringes the Paltalk patents," then goes on to ask for a jury trial. Presumably, actual information will be released once the trial begins."
Even Microsoft must be getting fed up with the instability caused by the patent system in the US. Do they benefit enough from having such a large number of patents that they would not put pressure on the system for change, or is everything building up to one big patent-lawsuit blowout with IBM/Sun/Every other major computer player (or does that work more like cold war style M.A.D.)?
Warhammer forums
I wondered how I felt about this, and I've decided this is a very good thing. I dislike MS as much as the next Linux user* but I also dislike patents. So what I hope will happen, and what I assume will happen, is that MS will be sued, but will win and these stupid patents will be invalidated. The patent trolls lose their patents and MS loses a lot of money on lawyers. yay!
*It is said "BSD is for those who love UNIX, Linux is for those who hate M$"... which I like so much I'll bring up now
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Of course they waited and waited to see how much business the XBox Live was doing. Regardless of whether or not their claim has any merit, it's typical that a plaintiff like this is going to claim that should be receiving licensing fees in proportion to the scale of business at which the patent applies. If XBox Live did 10 times as well, the calculation damages should result in a figure that his also 10 times higher.
That said, there is something SCO-like stinkin' here...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
You seem to have missed about half the point here. You are correct about the costs being insignificant to the XBOX project for Microsoft. Well, not entirely insignificant, but certainly nowhere near untenable.
However, the real point of this article is about the patent trolls. If you look at it as a case as MS having to decide if paying for trials or paying the desired settlement (which is bound to be less than what is asked in the trial itself) then you'll see that MS may be better off just paying these guys without a trial. This is a serious problem with the legal system.
You see, if Microsoft decided to take this to court, and they won, then a precedent would be set for similar cases in the future. This precedent would serve the smaller companies that can't really afford to pay out settlements. But instead, MS will probably just settle and give into this extortion and future cases just like this will continue to come about with no new ammunition against them.
It's unfortunate but, our legal system relies heavily on precedents and if none are set, well, no progress is ever made.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
IAAL, but not a patent lawyer. What I do know is that what you're suggesting would effectively dismantle the U.S. patent system. Trademarks just identify goods and services and protect what usually amounts to name recognition and consumer goodwill.
;)
But patents are completely different. A patent is a property right granted to an inventor that gives the inventor a reasonable period of time to profit from their invention without fear of infringement. Whether or not the inventor has profited from the patent is completely irrelevant. All it does is estop others from doing so. You can probably already see how a legal, government-granted right to prevent others from doing something would be incompatible with some constructive right to steal granted after a certain period of time. At the very least, the law is far more protective of innovation than it is of someone's right to sell an already-invented product under a particular name.
The other thing is that patents are by no means secretive--in fact, the process of applying for a patent involves revealing in intricate detail the "guts" of what it is you're trying to patent. Once granted, patents become public records and can be easily searched for at little cost. Therefore, if somebody is infringing on a patent, they really should have known better and their defense to what they're doing tends to be pretty weak.
The problem is that as computer technology matures, what looked like innovative and patentable products and processes years back can later look increasingly generic and onerous. There are other industries that suffer from this problem as well, but it's most prevalent in the computer industry, where a few years of innovation becomes an eternity (once the personal computer and software to run it and network it were invented, how do you really innovate from there?). The places where innovation can occur become increasingly smaller.
My personal opinion is that a certain amount of infringement and stealing is not just a symptom of the U.S. patent system, but *necessary* for further innovation in a field crowded with disparate technologies. But that's another story. And be prepared to be laughed out of court if you try to use that as a legal argument.