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Microsoft to Pay $1.52 Billion in Patent Suit Damages
An anonymous reader writes "A U.S. federal jury found that Microsoft Corp. infringed audio patents held by Alcatel-Lucent and should pay $1.52 billion in damages, Microsoft said Thursday. The news comes after reports that U.S. Supreme Court justices expressed doubts about whether Microsoft Corp. should be liable for infringing AT&T Inc. patents in Windows software sold overseas."
Microsoft being penalized or software patents being eliminated? Its like torture! Which way will we go!
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
Well, you know, patents are bad. So even though MS is "evil", supporting this ruling is the wrong way to go... Right?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Lately it seems that Microsoft has been spiraling downward at a good pace. From the uneventful launch of Vista to lawsuits like this, I think MS is spending more time on litigation and PR than developing good products.
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/I dunno I just have to hope when I flip the coin it explodes and kills me
Yeah I offered them an Alcatel-Lucent MP3 patent Indemnification plan but they said I was just trying to shake them down.
even big companies can benefit for adopting royalty-free open standards.
Bill Gates gets a call while he and his wife are having dinner out. Gates' response after hanging up:
"Honey? I'll be right back. Steve needs $1.5B so I'm going to go to the ATM across the street. He's waiting outs--I think that's him honking. Can you order the chocolate cake for me for dessert?"
The actual case is actually not half as interesting as Microsoft's and the Justice Department's arguments that source code isn't patentable. "I think the reason that's not relevant here is that the patented invention in this case is not software," [Assistant Solicitor General Daryl ] Joseffer said. "It's computer that has software loaded into it. And the components of a patented invention do not themselves have to be patented." Justice Alito's next question indicated his astonishment. "If these computers are built abroad and are sold with Windows installed, the component is the electrons on the hard drive? That's your position?" Joseffer responded yes, that's the US' position, but no, that's not AT&T's position. "It's the physical embodiment of the software which in some instances is manifested by -- by those electrons," said Joseffer, perhaps broaching for the first time in history the topic of whether electrons are patentable. "Now AT&T's contrary view is that the abstract code in the abstract is the component. The reason that can't be, is that object code in the abstract is just a series of 1's and 0's. In theory I could memorize in my head or write down on a piece of paper. But that's not going to combine with other, with other parts to make a patented invention."
What we have learned to date is that Microsoft will never have to pay anything like this kind of penalty. Even if they are guilty, they have already demonstrated their ability to heap appeal on top of appeal until many years from now, technology advancements will have moved the goal posts, effectively rendering the original claim irrelevant.
Their mastery of the legal system is so complete that were Eliot Ness alive today, Microsoft would be the principal nemesis in The Untouchables 2.
Shit, I don't care how rich Microsoft is.. 1.52 billion? Thats gotta hurt!
Patents are evil. Microsoft is evil.
Therefore, Microsoft being slightly hurt because of a patent infrigement ruling == neutral and we can all go home and have a nice cup of tea.
PS I'm scared because my last post was modded "flamebait", possibly because I accidentally called Canada the "People's Republic of Canuckistan". That hurt.
Azural - instrumentals
MS still has a number of appeals. Most importantly, the Federal Circuit has a 30-40% reversal rate in patent claim construction cases. It's too early to say that MS will pay.
Federal reserve system collapses on Lucent's deposit of Microsoft check.
Tough days for chairs ...
AT&T Corp. and Fraunhofer agreed in 1989 to develop MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 technology, now called MP3. Scientists from AT&T's Bell Labs collaborated with Fraunhofer before AT&T spun off the unit in 1996. Bell Labs became Lucent Technologies Inc., which Alcatel SA acquired last year.
Microsoft accuses Lucent of deceiving the U.S. Patent & Trademark office by having one of the patents reissued and backdated to 1988, removing it from the scope of the 1989 deal with Fraunhofer.
Chances are, M$, instead of seeing the light and lobby against the patentability of algorithms/math/shapes of clouds/ways of combing hair/etc will just hire more patent lawyers and patent everything remotely connected to computers to build a very thick patent armor and a large caliber cannon too.
At the end of the day Lucent and Microsoft and all those behemoths will sort it out between themselves and the small players get eliminated.
The IP lobby gets multiple orgasms, extends patent expiry terms to that of copyright, then extends the copyright to be ahead of patents and generates a new class of IP, the 'unpublished thought'. Since that latter can not be effectively monitored (yet), they introduce a levy (indexed by the education level) to be paid by any cognitive being to the TCAA (Thought Control Association of America); those who can't pay can instead sell themselves to the TCAA, which will export them to Chinese sweatshops as extra cheap slave labour. Persons trying to hide their being educated will be prosecuted as thought terrorist and will be sent to secret CIA torture centres where they will be used for testing new methods of extracting one's innermost thoughts. Skipping school is considered a federal offense and offenders are sent to re-education camps (these can be cheaply leased from Gulag, Inc. a company run by the Russian maffia). People in coma (and thus with no income) but with measurable brain activity will have their organs removed and sold to pay for their thoughts, however, as soon as their EEG goes flat, no more organs can be extracted in lieu of the thought levy. Rather, all remaining organs can be taken by the TCAA as payment of punitive damages for depriving the TCAA of its income by the old trick of being dead.
Then the ants all go to the Père Lachaise cemetery and spit on La Fontaine's grave.
Has begun, the patent wars.
For those of you who are caught up in hating MS, open your eyes and see what this really means. Many other companies licensed the technology from Germany's Fraunhofer. The list includes Apple, Sony, Creative Tech., Napster, and many other companies. This means that if this ruling stands, you will see many other lawsuits in the future related to this technology.
Neither story actually tells us anything about the alleged issue. They mention MP3, Fraunhofer, speech conversion, Lucent, but zilch about Microsoft-MP3-Lucent-courtcase. Crap journalism.
Worse! it also means MP3 players are unlicensed and you'll now have to use AAC. Too bad for everyone who locked themselves in to a proprietary non_DRM format that will soon lack any new players. Seriously... Can you imagine that ipods are immune to this lawsuits consequences?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You were joking; but that's exactly the same kind of non-indemnification that Microsoft sells its customers:
6 7
It's very likely that now Microsoft has a license to use MP3 internally; but no right to sublicense it to end users who may still be liable.
If you think I'm kidding, they've done it before:
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/430
This was posted by an AC earlier, which apparently nobody saw; so let me attempt to be loud enough to get heard.
This is a bad thing. B-A-D.
Many, MANY companies have this same deal with Fraunhofer. MS is only the first to be sued. It's very likely that those companies large enough to be worth suing will also be sued in large numbers, after this. The fact that you guys hate MS so much you consider many, many companies getting sued a "haha" matter shows you have a profoundly sick sense of humor.
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
A few more of these and software industry will abolish patents on its own volition.
That wasn't the point, as I read it. The point is that there may be a strong incentive to make players that don't support MP3 because it's encumbered and the owners doing the encumbering seem willing to exercise the ownership of their patent. In other words, there may be a shift to non-mp3 formats (AAC or say, ogg) for more players, and possible waning of MP3 domination due to incompatibility on players that don't support MP3 to keep cost down.
If they bought a license, what's the big deal ? All they need to do is recover the relevant emails from their backups.
"We are concerned that this decision opens the door for Alcatel-Lucent to pursue action against hundreds of other companies who purchased the rights to use MP3 technology from Fraunhofer, the industry-recognized rightful licensor," Tom Burt, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, said in a statement.
Oh! I see! Microsoft is now The Company That Cares!
Please. Since when has the welfare of another company been of any interest whatsoever to this utterly ruthless behemoth?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Software patents are a huge problem.
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