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Microsoft Ordered To Pay $388 Million In Patent Case

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pay-up dept.

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."

5 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Re:TFA is lacking info... by Alain+Williams · · Score: 5, Interesting
    That is not the point. It would be if this was about copyright, with a patent you can infringe it if you never heard of it, your programmers came up with the idea and coded it -- it just needs for someone to have submitted a patent application before the idea was published somewhere.

    This is why software patents are dreadful -- it simply rewards the guy who filed the patent application first. This is especially true with patents about simple ideas or those that are obvious to someone asked to solve a particular problem -- most software patents fall into this group.

  2. Re:Jury of average people+patents? a bad mix IMH0 by asc99c · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You only have to read the comments on Slashdot to see that a lot of people with above average technical literacy massively mis-read the scope of the claims of typical patents. And having done this, they often then pronounce the patent 'obvious' and have a lot of ideas of what could be prior art.

    As you say, when an average person looks at it, they could be expected to mis-read the scope of the patent in just the same way, but then not understand the obviousness of the ideas, or know of prior art.

    So a lot of it is going to come down to the skills of the lawyers on each side of the argument. I guess this is why fighting patent cases in the court can get so expensive even if the technical side of the argument is often pretty clear to the Slashdot crowd.

  3. Re:One can dream by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Interesting

    WTF is an illegal copy?

    Show me the law that makes installing a purchased copy of Microsoft Office on more than one computer illegal.

    There isn't one, that's why they need technological measures and scare tactics to enforce it.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  4. Re:TFA is lacking info... by tommi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Text from the actual patent:

    Systems and methods are provided for auditing and selectively restricting software usage based on, for example, software copy counts or execution counts. In one embodiment, the method comprises verifying whether the serial number for a software installed on a computing device corresponds to one of recognized serial numbers, and calculating a copy count (or software execution count) for the serial number. In response to the copy count exceeding a defined upper limit, a limited unlock key may be sent to the device. The limited unlock key may allow the software to be executed on the device for a defined time period, a defined number of executions, and/or with at least one feature of the software disabled.

    This sounds to me like a really general way of copy protection, yep another rotten software patent in my books.

  5. The summary is incorrect by Bryan+Ischo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's actually easy to take sides on this one. Software patents are WRONG, and so I'm on Microsoft's side. For once.