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Patent That Cost Microsoft Millions Gets Invalidated (arstechnica.com)

Posted by msmash on from the trolling-the-patent-troll dept.

An anonymous reader links to a report on Ars Technica: One of the oldest and most profitable patent trolls, Uniloc, has been shot down. Its US Patent No. 5,490,216, which claims to own the concept of "product activation" in software, had all claims ruled invalid by the Patent Trademark and Appeals Board (PTAB). The process through which PTAB eliminated the patent is called an "inter partes review," or IPR. The IPR process, created by the America Invents Act, is an increasingly popular and effective way for defendants to challenge patents outside federal courts. It was Uniloc's lawsuit against Microsoft that provided the company with its original headlines. Uniloc said that Microsoft's system of checking software licenses -- in other words, type in a key number and have your software validated violated -- the patent. That case led to a $388 million jury verdict against Microsoft.

4 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Re: One of the oldest and most profitable patent t by ilguido · · Score: 3, Informative

    Microsoft actually have products

    Uniloc too: it's actually one of the oldest software company operating in the security and product activation technology area.

  2. Re:manishs is not doing the needful by alexhs · · Score: 5, Informative

    It was an idiotic submitter

    Wrong.
    Remember: the original submission is always a click away, under the "You may like to read:" section.
    It's not rare that "editors" actually damage the original submission.

    --
    I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
  3. Law changed by Etherwalk · · Score: 3, Informative

    This doesn't necessarily mean the original holding was wrong--remember that probably *most* software patents have become invalid in the last fifteen years. The Supreme Court has made software patents much harder to get, so old ones that issued are often shown invalid after review. That doesn't mean you can violate them without being subject to damages (because they are issued and therefore have a presumption of validity)--but it does mean that if you trigger a review or fight them, eventually many of them will be shown invalid.

  4. good point, except SCOTUS said it was wrong by raymorris · · Score: 4, Informative

    You make a good point. However, the Supreme Court doesn't make the law. When SCOTUS makes a decision, not based on a new law passed by legislature, they are decreeing what the correct interpretation of the (old) law is. In other words, they ARE saying that any decisions to the contrary were wrong. There just wasn't a clear way to KNOW they were wrong until SCOTUS said so.