Microsoft To Pay $200M In Patent Dispute 81
Pickens writes "eWeek reports that Microsoft has announced it will pay $200 million to settle a patent-infringement suit against it by VirnetX, which alleged that the software giant infringed on its patents related to communications, virtualization and collaboration technology. This payment represents a substantial markup from the $105.7 million that a Texas jury awarded in March when it found that Microsoft had infringed on two US patents held by VirnetX. Microsoft will license VirnetX technology for its own products. 'We believe that this successful resolution of our litigation with Microsoft will allow us to focus on the upcoming pilot system that will showcase VirnetX's automatic Virtual Private Network technology,' says Kendall Larsen, VirnetX Holding Corp.'s CEO. East Texas courts have a reputation as a good place to pursue intellectual property suits against larger corporations. While many of these cases seem to be settled out of court — or dismissed as totally frivolous — recent lawsuits such as those leveled by i4i and VirnetX are notable for at least extending to the Big Judgment phase."
Re:The bigger you are (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft are patent trolls, so it's likely they either thought they'd already got a patent on the idea or that nobody else took patents seriously either.
They're faking it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Awww what a shame (Score:1, Interesting)
They patent everything because the system requires them to. You should blame the whole patent system instead.
Yes, but who is this "you" that you speak of?
When nobody with the voice in the software industry is speaking against the patent system, it is hard to be heard. In fact most are speaking for it not against it.
Maybe the "you", and the blame that goes with it, should also be directed towards the big players that keep feeding the system.
Re:Because MS LOVES patent trolls (Score:3, Interesting)
You bring up a good point. I see the settlement as Microsoft validiating the enforcability of patents. They get to go on record as being okay with paying to license patented technology. In the future when they go after other companies for patent infringement, they can say something to the effect of, "We didn't make the system, and in fact it hurts us too. Remember when we paid $200 million?"
not nice at all (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft doesn't really care much about the $200m; yeah, it's going to dent their income a little, but they get something back for it: the technology cannot be used by open source software.
And in this case, that might matter. The patent is on a simple way of establishing VPNs. There are lots of applications for VPNs, but establishing them in the past has been pretty tough, so people haven't been using it much. I don't think the method described in the patent is particularly deep, but as far as patents go, it is more innovative than the average crap that gets patented.
If this becomes a widely-used standard and can't be worked around, it's a big problem for Linux because you might not be able to connect securely to much of anything.