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Microsoft To Pay $200M In Patent Dispute
Pickens writes "eWeek reports that Microsoft has announced it will pay $200 million to settle a patent-infringement suit against it by VirnetX, which alleged that the software giant infringed on its patents related to communications, virtualization and collaboration technology. This payment represents a substantial markup from the $105.7 million that a Texas jury awarded in March when it found that Microsoft had infringed on two US patents held by VirnetX. Microsoft will license VirnetX technology for its own products. 'We believe that this successful resolution of our litigation with Microsoft will allow us to focus on the upcoming pilot system that will showcase VirnetX's automatic Virtual Private Network technology,' says Kendall Larsen, VirnetX Holding Corp.'s CEO. East Texas courts have a reputation as a good place to pursue intellectual property suits against larger corporations. While many of these cases seem to be settled out of court — or dismissed as totally frivolous — recent lawsuits such as those leveled by i4i and VirnetX are notable for at least extending to the Big Judgment phase."
Companies like Microsoft patent anything they can but eventually they'll realize they cant think of everything
and this kind of thing will happen more and more often.
The bigger you are, the less likely you are to see that every tiny thing you do is free of someone else's IP.
Interesting. I was not aware that Microsoft had a way to establish a secure connection between computers. Too bad they have to pay for the privilige to use it.
Personally I wouldn't push for money if I won a case against them, I would ask that Microsoft displays my company's name (if I had one) in big letters next to the product name. Free advertising and makes the point that it wasn't Microsoft's idea originally.
It may be worth nothing that 200M is not *in addition to* the 100M from an earlier lawsuit: From TFA: "In a joint statement Monday, VirnetX and Microsoft announced that both lawsuits would be dismissed as part of the $200 million settlement. Microsoft will also license the VirnetX patents, the companies said." The summary doesn't seem intentionally misleading, but I did not gather this to be the case.
My other sig is clever.
Microsoft was walking across the street in a hurry and accidentally dropped $200,000,000.00 on the ground.
It didn't notice.
Microsoft, and IBM and everybody else who is in any kind of position to be IP-trolled should _really_ be arguing that all software patents are invalid. So what if it thus invalidates their "investment" in software patents. They only spent that money to "repel boarders" in the IP wars anyway.
Funny thing that, the more you talk about patent trolling the more you get to analogies like "repel boarders". It's almost like "IP" stands for "Intellectual Piracy".
Hey big companies! Stop skirmishing and fight the war. Outlaw the Intellectual Piracy that matters. Outlaw the USPTO (at least in your bailiwick.)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
From the article, it's hard to tell if these are patent trolls or not. The i4i law suit is XML related - which I suspect falls into this category.
Trivial patents are bad for Industry and the community in general. Come on Obama, do something about it.
Just imagine if the hyperlink patent had been successfully defended - the Internet would be screwed ( http://news.cnet.com/2100-1033-955001.html ).
Your Friendly Neighborhood
AC
I'm actually on the same side as Microsoft about something. I mean, given the choice between MS and a bunch of IP patent trolls, I'll side with the company that actually produces product every time.
This ain't rocket surgery.
East Texas courts have a reputation as a good place to pursue intellectual property suits against larger corporations
It is not actually that good.
See also this comment on a previous story.
Nice to see Microsoft being bitten in the ass by the same patent troll strategy they are adopting.
The much-needed fix to the software patent problem will only happen after the big companies repeatedly pay out more through patent enforcement than they gain from it.
The real problem is big companies, especially Microsoft have invested so much in filing millions of non-innovative, frivolous, obviously prior, stolen and open-ended patents, and have enough lawyers, lobbyists and paid-off politicians in their pocket that there's no hope of getting the patent law fixed until Microsoft want it to be.
What they are doing is creating a weapon. They won't go after Red Hat directly, so they will loose a bunch of lawsuits against patent trolls, and let the trolls try to go after Red Hat in hope that Red Hat won't survive the multiple lawsuits. Then they will have convince the word that Linux is fragile because stupid software patents.
I've always loved how at the end of a patent dispute, the company who's lost to the patent holder, agrees "to license the 'technology'. After the money is paid out, I wonder if there's really anything that gets passed back... Code samples? Flowcharts? Theory of operations? Punch cards? I would guess in most cases zip gets transferred - and not the compression algorithm...
Company1 - "Yeah, hi, this is Bob at company X - we recently licensed your technology that allows people to use a mouse to interact with a computation unit in a way that allows the computation unit to perform a useful task. We'd like to get the relevant documentation?"
Company2 - "Um, docs. Huh - never thought of that - I mean it's never come up... Wow, I guess you could read the patent application - that's the only docs we got. BTW, would you like to purchase rights to allow the mouse to instruct the computation unit to perform a useless task? We got a special going on this week for that..."
Remember who was and is behind SCO? Remember who has been constantly threatening to sue Linux for infringing on its patents?
200 million is PEANUTS for MS, a very low price to pay for making sure nobody else can afford to enter the market. Wanna bet that 200 million goes to pursue further lawsuits?
MS will call for patent reform roughly at the same it stops with FUD and breaking standards. Software patents work for Microsoft. The occasional payoff is just the price for their way of doing business. If software patents are removed ANYONE can go into the software market. Not something MS would enjoy at all.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Microsoft=evil
Software patents=evil
Commence obligatory head explosions as we all realize that it's us, the average joe, that's losing in this battle.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Patents are granted only on the basis that the inventor's investment must be protected from competition by competitors who have money to compete without the burden of paying to invent. There's no way the inventor spent over $200M to invent their invention. Now they have recouped all their investment, and a lot of profit.
So they don't need a patent to protect them from unfair competition anymore. Their patent should expire, and they should compete solely based on their product's superiority in the market.
--
make install -not war
Microsoft doesn't really care much about the $200m; yeah, it's going to dent their income a little, but they get something back for it: the technology cannot be used by open source software.
And in this case, that might matter. The patent is on a simple way of establishing VPNs. There are lots of applications for VPNs, but establishing them in the past has been pretty tough, so people haven't been using it much. I don't think the method described in the patent is particularly deep, but as far as patents go, it is more innovative than the average crap that gets patented.
If this becomes a widely-used standard and can't be worked around, it's a big problem for Linux because you might not be able to connect securely to much of anything.
Microsoft so far are one of the few companies that don't patent troll. They tend to use their portfolio as defensive patents.
Bullshit. Microsoft of course uses their patent portfolio offensively. The reason you don't see these things go to court is because they are so good at it. They have patent cross-license agreements with all the big players, and none of the little players have the resources to fight them. Microsoft has a huge patent portfolio.
If Microsoft wants money from you, they can come with a huge stack of patents and an army of lawyers and say: "Look, we think you violate this patent, but if you think you don't, here are another two dozen you probably violate. And these are the dozen lawyers that are going to tie your company and your employees up in knots for the next ten years with depositions and court dates, keep you from shipping your products, and give you bad press. Now, for just 5% of your revenue, you can save yourself all this trouble. Do the math: even if you eventually win it's cheaper. Any questions?"
The only people moderately immune from this are open source developers, because they can basically tell Microsoft to put their cards on the table or go f*ck themselves.
seriously is there like a count somewhere?
how many times do you get caught stealing and goto jail for life?
perhaps that supreme court ruling could also apply to Microsoft as a bad corporation
Live by the sword, die by the sword (or, in Microsoft's case, get a bunch of small cuts due to holding the sword wrong).
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Before you condemn Microsoft for stealing someones IP you might want to look at both the companies current web site and the patents they are claiming to have been violated (689759, 6502135, 7188180)
How do you get away with including Windows XP in a suite when it was released BEFORE the earliest patent date?
The company even claims to hold the patent on "secure DNS"... Feeding trolls does not help society or advance technology even when it hurts a technology company you hate.
> IANAL, and I don't get why a regional court gets to decide national matters. Is this working as intended?
While you're correct that patent (and copyright) law is a federal matter, this court is not a state court, it's a branch of the federal court system that serves a certain region (the federal courts are divided into circuits that serve a group of states). The Wikipedia article describing how US courts are divided up may provide more information if you're interested.
I would say that software are overwhelmingly beneficial to MS.
For MS it's all about controlling the standard. Often that means killing smaller upstart companies.
Before we recognize that the patent system is insane?
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
Serves the b'stard's right.