Microsoft hit with $200m patent fine
Microsoft has been ordered to pay $200 million in damages for infringing on patents owned by Canadian company i4i.
i4i, which creates software for manipulating documents, filed a case against Microsoft in 2007 that claimed the software giant had knowingly infringed on one of i4i’s patents in both Word 2007 and Windows Vista.
The jury decided that the custom XML tagging features in Word and Vista infringed on i4i’s patents – something which the software giant aggressively denied throughout the case.
Microsoft has said it will appeal the verdict. “The evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid,” said a Microsoft spokesperson. “ We believe this award of damages is legally and factually unsupported, so we will ask the court to overturn the verdict.”
This isn’t the only patent infringement legal battle Microsoft is currently fighting, as the company was recently ordered to pay $388 million in damages to anti-piracy software outfit Uniloc Inc. for copyright infringement – a verdict which it is also appealing against.
Microsoft is also readying itself for another hearing with the EU early next month, which will decide whether or not the software giant’s bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows is harming competition.
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Discuss in the forums Replyhow do we download another browser to use ???????
Windows Explorer?
Next thing, Microsoft bundling Windows Explorer with Windows harms competition in the FTP client market... :)
Ha ha, I presume nobody has thought of that? I dont see a problem with them bundling IE. Nobody forces you to only use it? Mad.
Actually that wouldn't be a bad idea. Have a "folder" with a list of browsers to download and install.
wouldn't that still be forcing you to choose between just the ones THEY want? i am glad it comes with IE, how else am i supposed to go get firefox? :)
now hand me another taco chief
I would love it if Internet Explorer did not come with the installation. I've always kept a recent Firefox install file on my portable drive.
I think the most reasonable thing would be to have a menu list in the installation process.
But then again how many people actually install their own OS like we do. The masses would have preinstalled Windows and of course IE 8 with it. Over all I think that (FF)argument is a waste of time and would not change much if they did win.
Haha if everybody used Firefox I would be wondering what the better browser was.
you only have to look at the patent dispute that is graham bell. 2 people working on similar ideas but 1 got to the patent office first. so the other loses out. doesn't matter whose was better just who got there first.
Imagine a regular sunday morning mom calls and asks how the f*** she is supposed to use the internet without a browser
*signs her up to some linux course, wipes her harddisk and hides the windows disk*
No point in working on software when there's a good chance you'll be taken to court, lose your software and hard work, and pay up a lot of money.
Therefore I think that campaigns such as stopsoftwarepatents.org and endsoftpatents.org are not only good, but extremely necessary.
The patent system needs to be reformed or exclude software as a whole. If anyone can patent mathematical functions and pure ideas we're not going to have any development or innovation.
Linux vs GNU/Linux -- what's the diff? Obviously enough to *correct. So just wondering.
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On Topic:
Patent Trolls = Fail.
I think a patent should have to be for a specific idea. Apple shouldn't copyright a touch-screen phone, just their specific OS that allows it to understand the input for example. Thus if another company makes a touchscreen phone as long as it doesn't use the Apple OS then it'd be fine.
(Just an off the cuff example.)
Microsoft infringed many patents, in most situations they just shut up other (usually small) companies with money and the case never makes it to the public, the only moments you hear about it is when someone is not smart enough to use the "we'll go public unless you pay us" and thinks that taking the case to the court will earn them more. I think that Microsoft (but this applies to most really big companies) thinks of this as a way of buying the code or solutions. It would probably cost them more to develop it on their own, so they just take the ready solutions and shut everyone up with cash. $200m is pocket money for them and they have some really good lawyers.
Then there's the problem of big companies (IBM, for one), who can afford all the fees, patenting just about anything they can lay their hands on; holding on to those patents until another company develops something that is slightly close to "their" general idea and pounce on them with a lawsuit.
If I were able to patent my modding ideas, more than twenty people from this site alone would've been in court. It's a ridiculous idea. An idea is an idea and you shouldn't be able to patent it.
A very specific function? Yes. A very general function with thousands of applications, of which you're only going to use one? No. An idea? No.
I have already come up with a couple of ideas that i thought about, but never patented. a few years after my ideas, low and behold someone else is building them.
Using tft screens for picture frames and memory cards was an idea i had several years ago