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Microsoft Ordered To Pay $388 Million In Patent Case
jeffmeden writes "BusinessWeek reports today that Microsoft suffered a loss in federal court Monday. The judge rendering the verdict ordered Microsoft to pay $388 Million in damages for violating a patent held by Uniloc, a California maker of software that prevents people from illegally installing software on multiple computers. Uniloc claims Microsoft's Windows XP and some Office programs infringe on a related patent they hold. It's hard to take sides on this one, but one thing is certain: should the verdict hold up, it will be heavily ironic if the extra copies of XP and Office sold due to crafty copy protection end up not being worth $388 million."
PC World has the figure at $38 million, which one is right? News item here: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/162832/microsoft_loses_antipiracy_patent_case.html
U+F8FF
You're mis-counting.
Your numbers would hold up if you assume that every single person on Earth who uses XP (except, presumably, the person who purchased the first copy) had pirated their copy from this first person.
The set of numbers you want is people who:
Software patents are trivial because what they protect is not scarce.
Microsoft gets the paycheck for what it resisted so violently, even with lobbyists in third nations: sane patent reform.
Read this IPwatch article to get an idea what is going on in the Microsoft community. Phelps says:
What we've tried to do with "Burning the Ships" is take IP questions out of the realm of arcane debate among lawyers and show real people, in the midst of a highly dramatic internal struggle at Microsoft, learning how to deploy IP for tangible business benefit. As one reader put it, the book is a "thoroughly entertaining and informative canâ(TM)t-wait-to-get-to-the-next-page read."
Marshall Phelps wants to turn Microsoft into a kind of patent troll, or as they call it "open innovation".
IPW: A basic lesson in the book could be interpreted as, 'We were getting hurt by others who had patents, so we used our market power to require partners to agree not to enforce their patents until we had enough of our own patents to start enforcing them the way we didnâ(TM)t want others to do to us.' Can you address that?
PHELPS: Remember, this was back before software patents were a fact of life. MS was just getting a real head of steam but wasnâ(TM)t at all sure patenting was the way to go.
So either Microsoft kicks its bastards out or it simply deserves to suffer from these fines of a rotten patent system.
Ah, this is Marshall Phelps. A dark side of IBM import.
Sure, the recent job losses at Microsoft will not affect their "creation of IP". Look at SCO! Developers leave your company and lawyers litigate you to the ground. Great business model.
Microsoft are the richest corporation on the planet (to my knowledge)
Not even close. 1/2 the size of Exxon, smaller than Walmart or Procter & Gamble.
Microsoft are the richest corporation on the planet (to my knowledge) but their income is fading. They are losing money hand over fist for all sorts of reasons.
What are you talking about? Last year, MSFT's total revenue was $60 billion, compared to $51 billion for FY07. Gross profit was $48.8 billion versus $40.4 billion. And, net income was $17.7 billion versus $14 billion. Their income is not fading. And, they aren't losing money hand over fist.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
January 22, 2009 â" Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $16.63 billion for the second quarter ended Dec. 31, 2008, a 2% increase over the same period of the prior year.
A little quick calculation shows that $388 million is slightly less than 2.4% of that--which neatly wipes out that gain on the previous year.
Just because its not devastating to them doesnt mean its insignificant.
Their cash mountain has just about vanished though.
Are you talking about the $20 billion they currently have in the bank? Because, that seems like quite a mountain to me. Yes, it has gone down, but they're buying back billions of shares of their own stock. It's not like they're losing the money.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Depends on the country.
First couple lines of Wiki's entry on DMCA
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as Digital Rights Management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Your DMCA has anti-circumvention provisions, which mean that attempting to get around technology used to stop copying, i.e. copy-protection, is illegal.
Show me the law that makes installing a purchased copy of Microsoft Office on more than one computer illegal.
Ummmm... How about Title 17 of the United States Code? 17 U.S.C. s.106 grants the copyright holder the exclusive right to make copies. Section 501 says violating any of the exclusive rights of a copyright holder (including section 106) is a copyright infringement. Installing a copy of Microsoft Office on your hard drive is making a copy of the program (in fact, even just loading it into RAM is making a copy), so you can only do that with a license from Microsoft. Microsoft granted you a license to install it on one computer. So installing it on more than one computer is an infringement of their copyright.
And no, section 117 won't save you here. That only permits additional copies for archival purposes, or copying into RAM as an essential step in running the program. It doesn't grant you the right to install on more than one computer.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
For the love of god, quote the claims not the description. The claims are the only legally pertinent language in a patent. You might still have a point (and probably do), but pointing to what looks like the summary of the description and saying "see I told you so" means nothing. Slashdot readers need a patent law 101 course.
Your list appears to be using market cap. If you look at total equity (a better metric of current richness) the numbers are even stronger. Just as examples:
Exxon (XOM): 112.9B (Q4 09)
walmart (WMT): 65.2B (Q1 09)
Procter & Gamble (PG): 62.4B (Q4 08)
MicroSoft(MSFT): 34.4B (Q4 08)
AT&T (AT): 96.3B(Q4 08--higher equity dispite lower cap)
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ): 42.5B (Q4 08-ditto)
General Electric (GE): 104.6B (Q4 08 ditto)
Numbers from Google finance, most recent Q available.
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
If you're talking GPL, that's not an EULA, it's a *distribution* license. GPL specifically states you do not need to agree to it to use the software.
BSD isn't an EULA either.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Or a week ago was April 1 and whoosh.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau