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

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.

Comments

Re:manishs is not doing the needful

[alexhs]

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.

Re:One of the oldest and most profitable patent tr

[Insanity Defense]

Microsoft doesn't even have the guts to say which patents Linux, Android, whatever violate. They operate on pure FUD. That's worse than a patent trolls.

Their stated reason being that the patents might be challenged and invalidated. They are patent trolls IMO.

good point, except SCOTUS said it was wrong

[raymorris]

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.