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Microsoft Trial Misconduct Cost $40 Million
SpuriousLogic writes "The judge who banned Microsoft from selling its Word document program in the US due to a patent violation tacked an additional $40 million onto a jury's $200 million verdict because the software maker's lawyers engaged in trial misconduct, court records reveal. In a written ruling, Judge Leonard Davis, of US District Court for Eastern Texas, chastised Microsoft's attorneys for repeatedly misrepresenting the law in presentations to jurors.'Throughout the course of trial Microsoft's trial counsel persisted in arguing that it was somehow improper for a non-practicing patent owner to sue for money damages,' Davis wrote. The judge cited a particular incident in which a Microsoft lawyer compared plaintiff i4i, Inc. to banks that sought bailout money from the federal government under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. 'He further persisted in improperly trying to equate i4i's infringement case with the current national banking crisis implying that i4i was a banker seeking a "bailout,"' Davis said."
On one hand, it's fun to see Microsoft getting punished, on the other, I happen to agree with Microsoft's argument with regard to patent trolls.
I think Microsoft might have made out better this way anyway. Arguing to invalidate the patent could have hurt them and their practice of patent filing and arguing Bilski could have really blown the lid off of things. In short, they more or less had to defend "software patents" while at the same time finding a legal argument against the plaintiff.
Instead of trying to educate the jury that the whole point of "Extensible" markup language is to extend and customize the files the lawyers were pulling stunts. In the tragedy of errors, I cant decide who to root for.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
$2 million for mp3s, $40 million for a bad argument.
Do these judges send a $10 million bill to toilet paper companies when they have to wipe their backside?
How should I picture this? MS stopped paying, so instead of trolling for them we're trolling against them now?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
$40m is still about a million copies of Windows to sell... that's like losing all the revenue stream from sales to a major city.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
the law is on their side
Extending the "Extensible markup language" seems like a no-brainer. It is in the name of XML!!! And I thought patents had to be non obvious !
Not really sure on which side the law is on that one. That said, explaining this to a judge might prove to be a complex situation.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I don't know a lot about the intricacies of the legal system, but why is the client penalized for the behavior or mistakes of the attorney? Does the client dictate or approve every word that comes out of the attorneys mouth in court? If the attorney used misleading wording then shouldn't the attorney be censured or fined and not have that penalty included in the actual judgment?
Maybe this isn't applicable at all, but what if an attorney represented someone guilty of committing a crime, and the judge tacked a few extra years onto the sentence because he didn't like the attorney or what they said?
Better known as 318230.
I don't have points to mod you up, but the judges do need to have their heads and their asses examined.
In this case, I completely disagree.
Microsoft made the argument that a company having a patent but not producing anything shouldn't be able to ask for monetary damages. That is wrong. I can make an invention even though I know clearly that I don't have the money, talent and intention to turn this into a product that can be sold at profit. If I am better at inventing than at marketing it would be ideal to invent things and sell those inventions to others who are better at marketing. The fact that Microsoft uses the invention proves that it is worth money and that damages should be paid.
This is of course completely independent of the question whether the patent should be invalidated, or whether Microsoft is infringing on the patent. It is quite possible that a court outside Texas would have judged in favor of Microsoft, and stupid software patents should be (but are not) invalid, whether they are owned by Microsoft or used to extract money from Microsoft. But that wasn't what the judge complained about: He complained that Microsoft repeatedly told the jury to not award damages for reasons that were not in agreement with the law.
And since they tried to influence a court decision that was about $200 million, making them pay 20 percent for trying to convince the jury to do something that is clearly wrong seems fine.
Speaking of which, I wonder if any judge is going to fine the RIAA $40 million for comparing the defendant in a copyright infringement case to a seafaring marauder who terrorizes travelers and disrupts trade.
Sounds more like this judge is a jerk more than anything. I bet rolling your eyes would result in a year of jail with this judge presiding.
We lose.
Just because XML is eXtendible, doesn't mean that a particular idea implemented through that extension isn't non-trivial (lots of negations, I know...) and hence, patentable.
This is like saying that sailing and navigating a ship was a known skill at the time of James Cook, so his discovery of New Zealand and Australia aren't really discoveries at all. But in fact, he used a lot of skills and was a talented navigator (often stated as the best of his time) to successfully perform his journeys and draw maps that were used for centuries after!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Extending the "Extensible markup language" seems like a no-brainer. It is in the name of XML!!! And I thought patents had to be non obvious !
A common misconception on Slashdot is that patents are solely defined by their titles. The mere fact that XML has the word "Extensible" doesn't mean that anything you could ever write to extend it is therefore obvious. Consider - once the internal combustion engine was invented, did that make all engine improvements obvious? Fuel injectors? Catalytic converters? How about the new sparkplug-less engines?
Lawyers always win, that is a law of nature.
You may not like it, the same as you may not like gravity, but both are there to stay.
Accept them.
It's not the job of judges to determine the value of a law, only to interpret them.
Patent law doesn't say you have to be using the patented device to sue. It never even hints at it. The judge has no authority to make it say that. Microsoft was fined for pretending the law does say or hint at that.
It's been a long time.
1- i4i is actually a Canadian company.
2- They're patenting the idea of using XML to contain information relating to a document. I don't care if they're making a product that does it, it's still so broad and applicable, that they can hardly be called 'visionaries' for thinking of it, and then patenting it first.
Neither. I would follow the traditional rules for choice of venue, and thus would sue in a court near me. Normally, the venue for a lawsuit should be the court nearest to the plaintiff or the court nearest to the defendant.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.