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Judge Invalidates 13 Motorola Patent Claims Against Microsoft

Posted by timothy on from the lucky-number dept.

walterbyrd writes "Microsoft scored a victory against Google-owned Motorola Mobility this week after a judge scrapped 13 of the latter party's patent claims in a years-long dispute over H.264-related royalties. Waged in U.S. and German courts, the battle involves three patents (7,310,374, 7,310,375, and 7,310,376) that Motorola licenses to Microsoft for several products, including the Xbox 360, Windows and Windows Phone. PJ is commenting on the case over at Groklaw.net."

3 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. A humble suggestion to tech companies: by lxs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just a simple plan to help you survive these times of financial strife.

    1. Stop wasting money on lawyers.
    2. Start making quality products.
    3. ??? (actually you can skip this step)
    4. profit.

    1. Re:A humble suggestion to tech companies: by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The way to end that war is to take away the sharp sticks from everyone involved.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  2. Re:Microsoft undoing their own patents? by gnasher719 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft is arguing that as a 'means plus function' patent, it isn't specific enough because it doesn't specifically give an algorithm. Surely if this goes through it will invalidate the vast majority of software patents?

    It's not really about an algorithm per se. It's about specifying precisely what the algorithm is going to achieve. "Pick some block using some algorithm" isn't specific enough. "Pick some block using the following algorith: blablabla" is. "Pick some block by choosing among all blocks with distance less than 5 units the one that minimises the prediction error defined by the formula xxx" is specific enough, even if the implementor has to find their own algorithm.