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Chinese Court Rules Microsoft Violated IP Rights
angry tapir writes "A Beijing court has ruled that Microsoft violated a Chinese company's intellectual property rights in a case over fonts used in past Windows operating systems. The Beijing Number One Intermediate People's Court ordered Microsoft to stop selling versions of Windows that use the Chinese fonts, including Windows XP. Microsoft plans to appeal the case. Microsoft originally licensed Zhongyi's intellectual property more than a decade ago for use in the Chinese version of Windows 95, according to Zhongyi. Zhongyi argues that agreement applied only to Windows 95, but that Microsoft continued to use the intellectual property in eight versions of Windows from Windows 98 to Windows XP. Vista and Windows 7 are not involved."
You're assuming they knew
If you had licensed something to a company for use in one version of their only and they go and release another version without renegotiating with you wouldn't you check to see what was going on?! It would seem pretty crazy to me not to.
OTOH MS has said they are going to appeal so maybe the license wasn't very clear on exactly what MS was licensed to do. Without seeing the actual documents it's hard to tell.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Why fight it? It seems like a much cheaper solution would be for Microsoft to pay a fee for each copy of Windows sold in China.
What, all five of them?
$ make available
"It would depend."
No, it wouldn't.
The words "most places" make the statement wholly false.
"If you kick them to death after they're already down and disabled and there's a witness, you'll probably be charged with manslaughter"
No, you wouldn't.