Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Loses South Korea Patent Ruling
mikesd81 writes "Ars Technica is carrying an article discussing Microsoft's denial for an appeal in a South Korean patent infringement case. The case focused on the automatic translation between English and Korean in Microsoft Office and was brought against the company in 2000. The Supreme Court of South Korea ruled that the patents are effective for technologies switching the input mode between Korean and English." From the article: "Technology firm P&IB, which sued Microsoft on behalf of Professor Lee, wants Microsoft to ante up to the tune of W70 billion ($75 million) in a separate lawsuit covering damages. 'Microsoft adapted our technologies to its Office package without dealing with Prof. Lee and it claimed the patents were not effective in the court,' P&IB President Kim Kil-hae told The Korea Times."
The article says that this could 'prevent Microsoft from selling Microsoft Office in South Korea'... that's how you stop a monopoly: block it from selling a monopoly product. Fines don't really do anything to Microsoft, but anywhere they are prevented from selling even just one piece of their software blanket is a huge blow to their long-term strategy.
stuff |
Are they going to ban Java as well?
c /intl/faq.jsp#imf
http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/core/basi
Oh those crazy patents. First Microsoft wants to indemnify those estranged SUSE users, but can't pay a poor Korean prof (are any profs paid well enough?) for his patent.
The double edged sword of patent protection will continue to bite all of us, but in this particular case, there might be a smidgen of justice. Perhaps there's a nice way to treble the damages....
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It would be nice to have some details of the patent involved here. So far I've seen none.
The summary is also confusing. In one sentence it talks about automatic translation between English and Korean, the next it's about switching the input mode between Korean and English. These would seem to me to be two entirely different things.
As it stands if this really is concerned with switching input modes, then the folks at P&IB may wish to take a look at Apple's Mac OS X too. Since I'm married to a Korean, I've got my Mac at home set up to accept input in English and Hangul (the Korean alphabet). All I need to do to switch between the two is press Apple-Space. Mac OS X is smart enough to remember which alphabet you were typing in inside different windows too.
South Koreans do not blindly support the actions of the leaders in North Korea, they only hope that their countrymen are able to survive the current state of their leaders oppresive control long enough to see freedom. The South Koreans see North Korea as brothers and sisters that will one day find them reunited with each other. Why is it so bad to hope for reunification? Your comments are flamebait as I have never seen any South Korean in support for what the likes of Kim Jong Il has done.
And what if Microsoft did infirnge on patented technology? Then they must pay the price of that infringement.
(no, I am not Korean)
BadAnalogyGuy was so much more charming when he stuck to his forte: bad analogies. The political discourse is akin to McDonald's offering healthy menu items ;)
Anyway, you took an article about a dispute over a software patent and turned it into it's really no suprise at all that the ultra-nationalistic Koreans have found an American company at fault for anything and everything and a backdoor attack on the "American hegemony". Hmm. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
There is so much bad blood between South Korea and the U.S. over the current diplomatic situation with North Korea that it's really no suprise at all that the ultra-nationalistic Americans have found an Korean court at fault for anything and everything.
The Bush administration has empaneled the American courts with like-minded ideologues who have either made a career of following his pronouncements to the letter or seen their careers evaporate in a swarm of controversy.
The Americans have long turned a blind eye to the faults and foibles of their own countrymen, holding up globally disgraced heroes as leaders. This latest backdoor attack by the "American hegemony" is nothing to be shocked by. On the contrary, if a American court were to find against a American company in an international dispute, that would certainly be news.
Stupid Cheap Guitars
I can't say I know much about Korean politics but they seem to be a close ally with the United States even if they don't always see eye to eye with US policies. But to assume that Microsoft's loss in a patent lawsuit is somehow a backdoor attack is ludicrous. If the guy has a patent and Microsoft violated it then they should respect his ip as they claim they do and pay him.
On the other hand this seems more like the sad state of affairs in software patents coming back to bite one of the big software corporations that fail to work in a positive way to fix the system because in most cases it works to their benefit by stamping out competition.
Software patents should be trashed for two reasons, 1) software is covered by copyright not patents, and 2) software patents violate the patent rules because by their nature software patents end up as patents on ideas or abstracts instead of an actual working process and that is why we have people and corporations winning these idiotic software patent lawsuits.
This has less to do with Korean politics and more to do with the ongoing stupidity of software patents.
burnin
Though I read the article, I could no find any details on the patent. However, the tone of the article seems it is referring to 'automatic input mode switching' method.
o r)) both has a good implementation.
Very often, people type Korean while the input mode is in English, and vice versa. What the software does, is that it detects the context of the typing sequence, and figure out whether it needs automatic mode change or not. For example, detecting invalid Korean is simple -- the software simply seeks for invalid typing sequences, since each Korean syllable contains of a sequence of consonant - vowel - consonant (while the last consonant is optional).
Detecting invalid English sequences will be a little bit more difficult, but it seems to be possible using clever techniques combined with large dictionaries.
If the detection algorithm is crappy, typing becomes a nightmare, since it transforms correct English into incorrect Korean typing (or vice versa). However, in these cases, the 'auto-mode-change' can be turned off, or custom words can be added into the dictionary. The two most popular word processing softwares (MS Word and Hangul http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul_(word_process
The wierd thing is that I could not find any source of this news on most major Korean sites.
Perhaps it will help put the breaks on globalism and the patent/copyright feeding frenzy. It's obvious that we are going to have legal problems, to not resolve them up-front seems pretty crazy, but since greed got us where we are now, maybe it can get us out too.
Meh, I'm too optimistic.