Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Word Patent Case Going To Supreme Court
jfruhlinger writes "Microsoft may have had to change Word after being found guilty of violating a Canadian company's patents, but it's still resisting paying for damages — and is taking the fight to the US Supreme Court. If you can't stand either MS or patents, who do you root for here?"
If you can't stand either MS or patents, who do you root for here?"
The only side certain to win this.
You can hope the patent and patents like it get invalidated, by the way. The patent can get invalidated with Microsoft still being liable.
There are outcomes that satisfy anyone, unless you hate lawyers and multi-million dollar settlements with big corporations too, in which case, you are boned.
You root for Microsoft, of course. If you don't like Microsoft, you can choose not to use their software. But everyone is affected by the ridiculous state of the patent system right now. I'm not optimistic that the Supreme Court can/will restore any sanity, but it's a much bigger problem than any one company.
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
Microsoft kind of does oppose software patents. When have you seen them going after other companies if they don't provoke the legal fight first? They have also freed their patents to open and free-to-use patents organizations. The only cases where Microsoft has used their patents portfolio to fight against patent trolls is, well, when the patent troll has started going after MS first.
Ultimately, the whole software patent system is faulty. But currently, companies have to go by it and that means Microsoft has to register their patents too. Blame the system.
So Canadian Court says pay money
What Canadian court? Unless you for some reason think the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is actually Canadian.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Just be satisfied that each has to deal with the other.
So Canadian Court says pay money, so you go above them to the US Supreme Court, aka, Court of the World?
The Company and its people are Canadian, but i4i came to the US to sue Microsoft in the US District court of Eastern Texas.
Note, this is one of those cases of true alleged evil.
i4i is not a patent troll. They developed software. They showed Microsoft the software, in the hopes of Microsoft licensing it.
Microsoft reviewed the technology, apparently decided to not license it / not incorporate the technology.
The next version of Word included Microsoft's own copycat implementation of exactly the technology. And came to the market competing against i4i's product instead of properly licensing i4i's product.
IOW, this is not a bunk "obvious method" software patent. This is exactly the type of things patents are designed to prevent.
Wholesale stealing of a significant invention.
And the allegation of willful infringement appeared to be a reasonable allegation for i4i to make.
I normally go against software patents, but only because often the things that are patented are not inventions, or attempts are made to apply the patent to things simpler or more fundamental than the invention.
In this case, however, I would not object to i4i enforcing this patent and that succeeding
"Which position do your biased emotions tell you to take?"
Hope that MS loses to a multi-billion dollar lose (say even 100 billion), and that afterwards, either SCOTUS or CONgress will kill forever the evil method patents.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It is time to sue the patent office, not the patent holders:
The question the Supreme Court must answer is "What burden of proof is required to invalidate a patent?" The difficulty is that the *legal* answer may not match the *real world* answer. In theory, it should require a high burden of proof because the patent office already examined the patent application, determined it was patentable, searched for prior art, etc. But in reality, the patent office isn't doing that. I wish I could find the public statement where they basically said it isn't their responsibility to search for prior art. This problem is amplified by the fact that recent administrations are relying on the patent office to become a revenue generator.
In my opinion, Microsoft should sue the patent office. If the Supreme Court operates under the assumption that the patent office is following a certain procedure, and they are not, then they should have a case against the patent office. Then, they can go back to the courts and invalidate the patent after they have proven that the patent office is not doing their job.
This used to be true. Now Microsoft has been threatening people with patent litigation. If fact, they took the outstanding step of suing Motorola - several times!
Of course this is neither here nor there on the evilness issue. That's a story that has no beginning and no end, its purity no degree.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm sure it has been said in other comments by now, but just in case. Let us not forget that the Canadian company in question actually DID have a product related to the patent. They DID work with Microsoft. Microsoft stopped dealing with them and then continued to use the patented technology knowingly without license. THIS is why the court of appeals UPHELD the court findings. MS still doesn't want to pay, so they are taking all the legal approaches available to them to avoid paying. The Canadian company (IMI) in this particular case is NOT a patent troll. In fact they are actually using the patent system the way it was intended - to stop the big boys from destroying the business of the little players. So, you'll excuse me if I root for IMI in this case. MS is not innocent here - the courts even said so. BUT, perhaps if MS is made to play by the same rules they want competitors to play by, perhaps they'll realize the current system is borked and increase their efforts to help change the system. We'll ignore for now MS's role in creating the current cluster-f#$@ system that is in place. Disclaimer - I'm a Canadian. But I don't care where the company came from. MS bullied the company pretty much out of business by stealing their tech, and now doesn't want to pay the piper for their actions. I don't have any respect for anybody that plays that way.
Opponents of software patents should root for Microsoft here, regardless of how you feel about the company (I loathe their philosophy but like a few of their products).
Believing in justice means believing it applies even to your enemies and opponents. Besides, we don't want the Supreme Court setting some awful pro-software-patent precedent that will haunt less-deep-pocketed open-source developers down the road.
My bicyles
Are we only allowed to hate one company at a time?
When have you seen them going after other companies if they don't provoke the legal fight first?
You mean like just last month when they sued Motorola over Android? I guess you're counting Motorola abandoning the Windows Mobile platform in favor of Android as "provoking" MS.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
This patent is certainly less trivial than most, but like most things in computer technology it is not much of an "invention". The basic idea here is content / representation separation in document generation, something that goes back to the first automated business information systems. The idea of sticking a section like this in the middle of another document is about as exotic as the notion of include files and macros, which also go back decades prior.
In the early 1990s the idea of active content and embedded objects was all the rage. In fact Microsoft has been sued on those grounds before, by someone else who pulled out an idea that was "in the air" at the time. Not because it was an "invention", but because it was commercially practical.
Virtually every idea in computer science has been thought of decades prior, and the only reason long expired patents aren't already held on them is because the level of computing power didn't make them commercially practical at the time. These folks appear to have an excellent implementation of inline xml expansion, but it hardly ranks as an "invention" of the sort that no one would independently come up with for years to come.
And that is one of the basic problems with the patent system - give a company a twenty year monopoly on something that is at best a couple years advance on the prior art. The patent system is made for fields that experience a basic technological changeover about once a century, not fields that do that every ten years or so.
That is why the claim that they "ripped off our technology" has about as much credibility as the claim "I played a heretofore unknown chord on the piano". A minor twist on something bouncing around in the heads of computer scientists for decades prior at best.
SCO's fight against Linux was funded in part by Microsoft. Then there are the 235 mystery patents that Linux supposedly violated. They're more into scare tactics than outright patent war,
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I can list you plenty of reasons for fighting and boycotting Microsoft. Google? You'd have to help me out there.
The only thing I'm really aware of being a problem with google is the collection of personal information. But there's a simple solution to that: don't use google/use it wisely.
For MS there is no workaround. They are and have been keeping the software industry and community back. With MS there is no choice but to fight them in every which way that is possible. It's them or us.
Microsoft kind of does oppose software patents. When have you seen them going after other companies if they don't provoke the legal fight first? They have also freed their patents to open and free-to-use patents organizations. The only cases where Microsoft has used their patents portfolio to fight against patent trolls is, well, when the patent troll has started going after MS first. Ultimately, the whole software patent system is faulty. But currently, companies have to go by it and that means Microsoft has to register their patents too. Blame the system.
NO: http://eupat.ffii.org/gasnu/microsoft/index.en.html
Your entire post is false and tantamount to flamebait. Destroying software patents would not allow someone to copy MS code verbatim and only change branding. That would still be covered under copyright. The abolition (or weakening) of software patents would only mean that other teams can create, from scratch, implementations of previously patented software without worrying about the fact that the patent shouldn't even exist because there exists prior art back 10 or 20 years.
FC Closer
I'm going to regard that first post not as a Troll, but as finely crafted satire on the Slashdot groupthink. Seriously, if there's anything trollish here, it's the summary itself. Corporations are not football teams. You don't slavishly follow a brand or a company and excuse it when it behaves badly or condemn it even when it does good. What sort of moron does that make you?
Software patents are damaging and a barrier to entry which reduces competition. If Microsoft (which is a huge organization of people, not a gestalt entity, and thus more than capable of being good in some ways and bad in others), if Microsoft make moves which helps shoot down stupid patents, then that's a good thing.
If you're going to "root" for anything, you root for right action, regardless of whether it's done by sinners or saints (and most are both).
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
The only thing I'm really aware of being a problem with google is the collection of personal information. But there's a simple solution to that: don't use google/use it wisely.
Google analytics is on just anout every web page. The cookie is kept forever. Most users aren't even aware of this sort of thing so "use it wisely" isn't useful advice. They keep information *forever*. They decided to completely ignore copyright and disrespect the authors opinions by indexing every book, then going behind the authors' backs and presenting Google Book search as a fait accompli in order to improve their bargaining position. Google is in a position to punish websites without giving a reason. They have been known to do this.
And Microsoft has a better privacy policy that Google!!!
Not sure if that all makes Google evil but it does make it worth watching them.
Well I believe that copyrights should only be a decade and after that should have to be renewed every year starting price of $100k and doubling every year after that. Does that count? And as for whether or not piracy is legal I would argue that in its current form it should be frankly ignored by the entire populace since the current laws were brought about by treasonous bribes. The whole point of copyrights were a contract between We, The People and the artists, NOT the middlemen, not the mega-corps, but the people and the artists. Now it is simply the locking up of our entire culture by multinationals, since pretty much our entire history of the past since the advent of TV will be locked behind paywalls until the end of time thanks to a fucking cartoon rodent. When laws are written by criminals, such as congress critters allowing lobbyists to write laws in return for bribes and cushy jobs for their families, why should they be respected?
As for TFA? That is simple: Microsoft simply because software patents are a giant clusterfuck holding up innovation and creating industries out of doing nothing but leeching off of other companies with lawsuits, so ANY company that brings these kinds of cases to the Supreme Court should be rooted for if for no other reason than hoping that somehow the courts will grow a brain and finally kill these things dead. I personally think Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs are both major assholes but if it was them fighting software patents I'd be "Go Oracle and Apple!" all the way. You don't have to like the company to hope that another hole will be blown through the crap that is software patents.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You've broadened it beyond Software Patents which is what I explicitly referred to. That's a different matter. Software can be protected by copyright which is fair. Applying patents usually amounts to saying that only one group is allowed to solve a problem, which is not.
As regards being able to sell on patents, this is entirely right if the patent itself is right. Certainly they should have a resonable expiry period, but saying that only the person that comes up with an idea is the person who can implement and manage the production of the idea is hugely inefficient and limiting for all parties.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I don't disagree with you at all. All I'm saying is that with google I, as a technical sort of person, have the option to avoid the problems that indeed do exist.
With MS you cannot avoid the problem. MS continues to fight progress and freedom everywhere, and it will impact everybody sooner or later. MS must be destroyed, there is no alternative.
With google it is far far from being that bad right now.
You don't slavishly follow a brand or a company and excuse it when it behaves badly or condemn it even when it does good.
Well, you're not supposed to behave that way. However, many people do exactly that. Just look at the Apple / Linux / Microsoft flamewars.
How is my writing like that of a troll, because I am honest and don't bullshit? Were our laws corrupted thanks to a cartoon rodent? Yep and his name Mickey Mouse. As for old Steve and Larry, even fanbois will have to admit they can both be serious asses at times, for example Oracle punt kicking most of the Open Source guys and Steve even blocking magazines that dare to talk about a competitor. Oh and don't forget the famous "You're holding it wrong!" bit. It is a phone, how in the fuck am I supposed to hold it?
And as for your post, middlemen are leeches, full stop. While they had a use in the past when getting a record pressed cost thousands, they simply aren't needing anymore. A much better solution would be an investment type of deal where you agree to pay some of the upfront costs for a percentage of future profits. Ever seen a current recording contract? Because I have, and frankly they'd make you sick. It is the most one sided, fuck the artists, rip everyone off for every penny thing you have ever seen. It makes "Hollywood Accounting" look like an above board practice by comparison.
The reason they can get away with that shit is copyrights, pure and simple. By having a back catalog that thanks to bribes will last for infinity they can build HUGE warchests which they use to buy up the gateways like radio and TV, as well as for bribing politicians to pass ever more laws that favor them. Oh and the artist earning money for life? Yeah, dream on. Did you know it took Meatloaf FIFTEEN YEARS to get paid for "Bat Out of Hell I" and he ended up filing for bankruptcy? Yeah they claimed that an album still on the top 200 actually didn't make any money. You know how much Cheap trick gets from iTunes? ZERO. Hell even corporate suckups Metallica only get a lousy 85c for a $20 album! while the fantasy of having a hit song and never working is nice, I can tell you from watching friends sign contracts that unless you are a hit long enough to survive your first contract not only will you not make it rich, but you may even get a fricking BILL after they get done cooking up "expenses". I know because I had some friends in Nashville that ended up having to break up after selling over a quarter million records because not only did they not get a cent, they got hit for a bill for $35k for "advertising expenses" even though they didn't get promoted for shit. oh and the record company now owns all the rights. Sweet huh?
So I'm sorry if you don't like the way I write, but after seeing these blood sucking leeches first hand frankly the whole damned system needs to be junked. I swear to God I've known dope dealers that are less scummy and evil than record scouts. And the reason why these major asses have so much power is thanks to copyrights giving them unlimited capital to bribe and coerce. And surely you will admit 150+ year copyrights are nothing but a license to print money for middlemen, correct?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Where's the (-1, naïve) button??
Patented (duh!)
coding is life
How will this narrow patent law? I don't think that MS is arguing against the patent system. If anything, MS is arguing against this one particular patent. Whatever the outcome, it will have no effect on the patent system, or MS's future behavior.
That isn't true at all. The issue at the Supreme Court is not this particular patent. The issue is what the burden of proof should be when attempting to prove a patent invalid, particularly when an alleged infringer brings evidence not considered by the Patent Office. The Supreme Court is deciding whether this particular patent is valid or infringed, only the evidentiary question. Microsoft is most certainly arguing against the patent system in the sense that it seeks to change the status quo. If Microsoft is successful, the outcome--a precedent setting Supreme Court decision--will affect the patent system and Microsoft's future behavior.
Remember, Microsoft is involved in about 50 patent suits at any one time, almost always as a defendant. It's therefore in Microsoft's interest for it to be easier to invalidate questionable patents, and this is an interest shared by a lot of Slashdot readers. And to the extent Microsoft sues others for patent infringement, if patents are easier to invalidate then Microsoft will be more careful about which patents it sues on and which inventions it seeks to patent in the first place.
If Microsoft is successful here, then it will be easier to invalidate questionable patents, especially when using prior art or other evidence not considered by the Patent Office. This is significant because the Patent Office often does not have the time or resources to search all possible prior art, especially art that has not been neatly cataloged and indexed for search (e.g. that ancient piece of software you remember using in the 80s that did exactly what the patent claims but isn't sold anymore).
An important feature of this case is that even if Microsoft wins at the Supreme Court level, the patent may still be found valid and infringed. If Microsoft wins and the case goes back down to the trial court, it's entirely possible that the judge will say "nope, the evidence still doesn't meet the new lower standard; pay up."
And just how am I supposed to act about legal theft? I have watched damned good friends get every damned thing they worked years for stolen right out from under them, and then get told "Just try and sue us, we'll bury you". They lost the rights to their songs, the recordings, hell even their own band name so yeah seeing good people that just want to put food on their tables doing what they love and they have a God given talent for get royally robbed by a system that rewards bribery and power above decency? Yeah it pisses me off.
But anyone who has read my postings knows I am just an honest Joe that calls it like he sees it, and I actually have feelings and am not afraid to express them. If I was trying to troll I would have called them filthy names instead of leeches, which anyone who has looked into Hollywood accounting knows that calling them leeches when they have built an entire industry around legalized robbery is actually being quite civil. Think Hollywood Accounting is bad? Look at the contracts for new musical acts. THE COMPANY get the copyrights, THE COMPANY get the digital sales, THE COMPANY get the sheet music rights, and THE COMPANY gets to decide "when and if" you actually get paid a cent or OWE THEM MONEY for "expenses". If anyone else tried that kind of bullshit they'd be hit by RICO so fast it would make their heads spin, but because endless copyrights give them endless money for bribes it is all gravy.
Complain about me having feelings in the matter all you want, but good honest decent folks are getting robbed every damned day of the week by leeches that then have the gall to sue kids and granny saying "it's for the artists" that they just don't happen to pay and often steal from. If that can of unmitigated gall doesn't severely piss you off, well then you have no heart sir. Living so close to Memphis and Nashville I have watched good decent people lose everything they own just trying to get these leeches to pay a few cents on the dollars they made, often ending up losing everything that they own thanks to endless lawyers and legal BS on the part of the record companies. It is wrong, it is evil, and it is disgusting that they are allowed to get away with this garbage. I really don't know how to put legalized theft and racketeering into any nicer words than that. I'm sorry if that offends you, but their actions are frankly and patently offensive sir.
And blaming it on "the system" is like saying we shouldn't do anything about insider trading or bribes, since bribes and insider trading has existed for centuries. What we can do is get royally pissed off, make sure every time they say "it is for the artists" we drown them out with example after example of their thefts, in short we make sure that everywhere they go they are treated like the leeches they are. It will be that much harder for them to bribe and rig if the populace looks at them as scum, because politicians still want to be re-elected and being seen as supporting robbing kids of their dreams is about as low as you can get. We geeks can make cool viral videos, websites to inform which politicians have been selling us out, we CAN make a difference! So while we agree the system is broken, I believe the first step in fixing it is pointing out the "rich artists" lie, because compared to what the leeches get even the top acts make a pittance. Sure it looks like a lot to an average Joe, but point out that they are getting less than 6c on the dollar on average, and most don't get paid at all, and Joe will realize it ain't the artists being greedy here, it is the leeches in the middle. Peace.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.