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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."
Presumably, actual information will be released once the trial begins.
I don't know if I'd make that assumption anymore. (see SCO v. IBM)
This guy's the limit!
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
In the best case scenario this is thrown out of court and Microsoft's lawyers actually get to earn their keep. No big deal other than a few sensationalist headlines every now and again. Isn't any press good press anyhow?
In the worst case Microsoft is seriously guilty of the claims of infringement. They end up paying a few tens of millions of dollars and having to pay to liscense the stolen technology in Live. But considering that Microsoft makes billions of dollars each year as a whole company and that the Xbox division dropped something like $4 billion on the Xbox, and probably a few extra billion on the Xbox 360 at this point, does an extra ten or twenty million dollars really matter?
Considering that Live is one of Microsoft's big selling points for their console, I seriously doubt that they would put themselves into a situation where they could no long offer it until they fixed parts to work around the infringement. Either they throw some chump change at some company or they don't. Business as usual in that the only real winners are the lawyers.
Paltalk is a company that makes an addon for AOL, Yahoo, and ICQ that apparently "enhances the traditional instant message and chat room functionality you know and love with state-of-the-art voice and video that you'll enjoy with all your senses", including the equivalent of multiple-user audio/video-conferencing in chat rooms and instant messages. Presumably, then, they are going after the in-game chatting ability in X-box live. If this is true (though don't take it as read, I'm not a patent lawyer), it seems utterly baseless -- or at least, an obvious extension to an already existing technology, which is pretty much the same thing.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Blizzard's battle.net service? IIRC that was rolled out around 1997, wouldn't it be prior art then?
This just goes to show you how useful technology is becoming for real-life scenarios.
MS sued over Xbox live? Tremendous progress! I mean, you don't see many law suits taking place over AIM, TTY, or even IRC!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
While the program is running, a Paltalk representative arrives at your house, kicks you in the shin, deposits a dog turd onto your carpet, and spits in your mouth. And for those with a sixth sense, he imagines kittens being thrown into a wood chipper.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
I'm not totally clear on that but I'm sure the porn industry will lead the way.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
The entire point of patents is to protect an innovator from losses if/when some entity tries to profit from the innovator's hard work (without licensing it from the innovator.) If nobody's profiting (actually, if the innovator isn't losing anything -- an "entity" similarly can't start making widgets they don't own or license the patent for and give them away, no matter how altruistic their motives might be, because the patent holder is presumably losing money every time someone accepts the "free" widget instead of purchasing one from a licensee -- then there are no damages and there's no reason to file suit. It's entirely possible that Microsoft legitimately owes these folks a trunk of money, and it's just as likely that Microsoft will just cut 'em a check for whatever the market value is for the technology to just buy the patent and continue on their merry little juggernaut-jaunt -- one thing we can count on, though, is that Microsoft's more than willing to pay a few lawyers to push paperwork through the mill to see if they're legally obligated to write the patent holders a check (that much they've proven time and again)
Slashdot may be approaching the "breakover" point towards A.I.; the captcha on this post was "quagmire"... spooky!
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That's an odd way to sue someone, I'd think they'd do it in a court of law.
rooooar
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.
I guess this is the American Way? Sue, sue & sue, its quite annoying. The only reason why they are doing this is because they know MS has loads of cash.
From TFA: "The two patents at issue are the '523 patent and the '686 patent, both of which involve server-group messaging."
I read every comment that was posted prior to starting to write this. Lots of babble about "Oh, Battle.net predates this" and "it must be about voice over Live". Read, people!
The '523 patent, from a cursory reading of the one independent claim, looks to involve transmissions from a collection of host computers (think individual Xboxen), back to a central server, where the data is aggregated, and then returned to one of the host computers. Interesting bit is that it's dealing with a unicast network and payloads, which doesn't sound like packet-based transmission. See the long, boring words of the patent for more details.
The '686 is an extremely narrow-looking patent, addressing the creation of a "group" of computers for messaging purposes. See Claim 1 - there are 6 ennumerated elements, each with subconditions, and a final non-ennumerated element; infringement would have to touch each and every one of these elements.
...bloody time!