Microsoft Sued Over Patent Infringements 162
Foobar of Borg writes "The Associated Press is reporting that Microsoft is being sued over alleged infringement of three patents held by Visto Corporation. The patents in question relate to the handling of information between servers and handheld telcom devices.
Jack Evans, a Microsoft spokesman, has not commented on the case itself, but has simply stated that 'Microsoft stands behind its products and respects intellectual property rights.'"
Nnnnyes.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Too Many Patents (Score:3, Insightful)
The small guys try to get rich with patents suing the big guys, so the big guys get further patents to protect themselves.
The system is fucked.
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Visto's press release (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing like a little pressure from industry giants to speed up much needed reform of the patent system.
How things change... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, they have strangled the competition so much that the dream of many little startups is to fold, hold onto their 'Intellectual Property' for a while, then sue the heck out of Microsoft.
Which, by the way, is not a bad strategy at all, since Bill Gates & Co. have billions and billions of dollars in the bank and are very willing to buy their way out of legal troubles (monopoly problems with DoJ and all that).
Re:Too Many Patents (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Patents (Score:2, Insightful)
what a bunch of sleazeballs (Score:5, Insightful)
Visto's argument that it is good to beat Microsoft with patents because of Microsoft's monopolistic practices is wrong. It is true that Microsoft is behaving monopolistically with Exchange and Windows Mobile, but that's an issue for regulators and the market to worry about. Allowing Visto's and NTP's bogus patents to stand only replaces a big monopolist with a little one.
Respects intellectual propery rights? (Score:1, Insightful)
Remember that this is the company that copied Stac Electronics' disk compression software, infringed on their patents, and lost the resulting lawsuit. The whole debacle ended up costing Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars.
wild. (Score:5, Insightful)
My point is that our corrupt politicians have allowed what should have been copyright law become patent law. Your code is a parallel to writing a book, not a parallel to creating the electric engine.
The irony is that big corporation like Microsoft have shot themselves in the foot here. They pushed for this type of patent law out of fear that their software would easily be duplicated, so It is funny to watch them get slapped by so many frivolous law suites.
Re:Patents (Score:3, Insightful)
But of course, we all know that under AIPA all patent applications will be published within 18 months of filing, except in special circumstances where the inventors waive the right to claim priority in a foreign country to the US patent application. And of course, we all know that, because this is an extremely basic and well-known fact about patent systems around the world.
Second, doing a "real" patent search is an expensive proposition (I'm not talking about your boss doing a 2 minute google search on a few key phrases). No company can do that type of search on every little thing that comes along.
This is true, but any serious company can afford an accountant to handle their taxes. This keeps them out of trouble with the IRS. Any serious company can likewise afford to a) purchase litigation insurance, or b) invest some money into researching its IP liability with legal experts before taking a product to market. This keeps them out of trouble with the patent system. Pleading ignorance about patents is akin to pleading ignorance about taxes. Hire an expert or expect problems.
Re:what a bunch of sleazeballs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Patents (Score:2, Insightful)
In all seriousness now, for every section of code that I write during the day - if I were to spend an hour searching patents to make sure I don't infringe on something that just triples(or more) 99% of all software projects I've ever worked on.