Microsoft Loses $290 Million in Patent Battle Fail
Microsoft pays for old version of Word's XML.
The Supreme Court decided that Microsoft would have to pay the $290 million charge that a jury deemed suitable for a patent infringement against Toronto-based software company i4i.
A jury verdict already awarded over $200 million to i4i over Microsoft's infringement of an XML technology that the software giant used in its previous versions of Microsoft Word.
Microsoft has appealed the decision up the legal system, but now the word from the Supreme Court means that i4i can finally celebrate.
Michel Vulpe, i4i's founder and chief technology officer, commented on the Court's unanimous decision, "We're very pleased that the court did the right thing."
Loudon Owen, i4i's chairman, said in a statement, "This is one of the most significant business cases the court has decided in decades."
Microsoft actually pushed for the courts for a new standard in patent matters. According to Reuters, the Congress-accepted standard is that the defendant in a patent infringement case must "prove by clear and convincing evidence that a plaintiff's patent is invalid." Microsoft, on the other hand, wanted a "lower standard of proof involving a 'preponderance of the evidence' would make some 'bad' patents easier to invalidate while promoting innovation and competition."
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I remember hearing about i4i or better known as "Eye for an Eye." Just a group that makes all of their business buying up patents and then suing companies who may infringe. I would much rather have Microsoft winning this instead of the people who represent what is so wrong with our copyright/patent system today.
Idiots will look at this as a win.
A terribly inconvenient defeat for Microsoft at a bad time and for a high price.
The best part of this article: Ballmer sweating like a fat pig in the picture.
i4i is a patent troll, microsoft losing that case is bad for the industry in general.
i4i are not patent trolls. From what I can recall, they are a small company that deals with the automated conversion of text into computers.
It's their patent, and microsoft knowingly infringed on it. And now justice is served.
While I love it when people stick it to MS, I too agree this is a bad thing. I'm tired of lawyers who's only business is to sue people to make money for themselves. Anyone remember the group of lawyers who bought up a bunch of patents that they vaguely interpreted as giving them the patent on buying stuff on the internet and then started suing small businesses to buy a $3000 "Internet Commerce" license from them? Thankfully those morons were successfully counter sued when several of the small business banded together and put them out of business.
i4i are not patent trolls. From what I can recall, they are a small company that deals with the automated conversion of text into computers.It's their patent, and microsoft knowingly infringed on it. And now justice is served.
What products do you own from i4i? Exactly.. just another Rambus. Company that failed at making anything and now just sues people for a living. Pocket change to MS anyway...
Nice to see the copycat company MS not get away with another stealing of an idea. They copied Apple in the beginning after Bill shafted the author of MS DOS and shoved him under the bus. MS then bullied, copied, stole, you name it to get where they are and people wonder why I dislike the convicted monopolist. Their OS is not that great anyway, bloated and clumsy compared to Gnome on Linux or OS X. The only thing I see MS with an advantage is games but that is all about shoving their proprietary Direct X down everyones throats and that is quickly changing too. OS X is on STEAM now and I hear there is talk of Ubuntu on STEAM.
Not to mention that the tablet and phone games do not use the proprietary DX crap either.
The current patent system is a load of crap in my honest opinion.
Competition allows us to innovate further. Not "I got the patent, you can't do shit" type of crap. The space race for example, we got the the moon because of competition (regardless that it was a competition for the top power in the world).
So many good things come from competition, that's why there are laws against monopoly. Yet, for some reason, we have a patent system that seems to strive solely for monopoly? I don't get it.
Intel vs AMD
nVidia vs AMt(used to be ATI...)
Pepsi vs Coke
Competetion.
Without it we'd still be in the stone ages...
I say, abolish the patent system until revisions are made to make it...sensible.
why is dude sweating so hard in that photo.... LOL
Steam is on OS X now and the handful of games available run at much lower frame rates than they do on windows so you might as well just run Windows via Bootcamp if you're dumb enough to overpay for a Mac and expect to game on it. Mind you it'll still be a let down since Mac doesn't offer cutting edge GPUs.
Fixed.
Best fixed I have seen all week fyend!
OS X is on STEAM now and I hear there is talk of Ubuntu on STEAM.
I can buy OSX on Steam now?! When did that happen?!!!?!?
Patents are always in debate and argument. Think their purpose is to find ways to help reduce or better manage that of debate or arguments within innovation and design to say. But of it at least is the fact that everyone doesnt make the samething and of it that on the idea of anything right maybe for there to be a way to ensure that; that's what it is. Techincal and "legally". Even though patents i think can be applied without great detail due to the fact of being able to access the info, but again maybe not as well. But even on info detail, is the issue of detail flips, to say rather that is of "innovative" means is probably far and in between. To get the same or different results differently.
What a bad decision. How can you patent something so vague as the way you edit text documents with structured XML. As much as MS is a bloate company they really do get screwed a lot. All because MS did not want to do business with a company that had nothing to offer them.
Nice to see the copycat company MS not get away with another stealing of an idea. They copied Apple in the beginning after Bill shafted the author of MS DOS and shoved him under the bus. MS then bullied, copied, stole, you name it to get where they are.
Your recollection of history is sadly lacking.
Just go watch Triumph of the Nerds, it might help you get your scrambled memory correctly organized.
Oh man.. I thought that man's shirt was a design of spots till I realized it was sweat.. What is the point of making millions when one can't even take care of their health. GO EXERCISE.
$290 Million is pocket change for M$.
I can buy OSX on Steam now?! When did that happen?!!!?!?
Wow, that comment was awesome.
I find Microsofts desire to change patent cases to be refreshing. It is a good American stance where the plantiff has to argue the validity of the case instead of the defendant disproving guilt.
I decided to look up i4i, and apparently they are now selling a library that allows you to use the XML that they took out for Word 2007/2010. So, basically what MS already had and was forced to remove is put back in if you pay another company for it. What a bunch of scumbags those i4i people are...
I also enjoy watching a parasitic, degenerate, and incompetent company like Microsoft pay a lot of money to a small company, since they've destroyed a lot of small companies by their illegal activities. But, the patent system is important even than extracting revenge against an ugly monopoly.
Without knowing the actual law, the comments here are probably based on conjecture, but the key point of patents is they should promote innovation, not impede it. It's not clear in many of these cases that it's doing that.
Also, Rambus does make useful technology, and has been used in computers, and is used in the PS/3. Of course their incessant litigation sometimes buries that fact.
Nice to see the copycat company MS not get away with another stealing of an idea. They copied Apple in the beginning after Bill shafted the author of MS DOS and shoved him under the bus. MS then bullied, copied, stole, you name it to get where they are and people wonder why I dislike the convicted monopolist. Their OS is not that great anyway, bloated and clumsy compared to Gnome on Linux or OS X. The only thing I see MS with an advantage is games but that is all about shoving their proprietary Direct X down everyones throats and that is quickly changing too. OS X is on STEAM now and I hear there is talk of Ubuntu on STEAM.Not to mention that the tablet and phone games do not use the proprietary DX crap either.
Oh shut the hell up already. How does "this guy" always make it into legit conversations? Just because there's a little following for both Apple and Linux, it doesn't make those systems better. Hell, OS X is just as bloated as Win 7 except I don't need to get into the console to disable junk I don't need in Win 7. Not to mention, if Linux was so superior, I wouldn't have to crawl through the net trying to figure out why my wireless card stopped working in Fedora 15. As far as games are concerned, they don't run as well on OS X. They've done benchmarks and I've tested it out myself. You lose 10+fps just by using that OS. And it's EXTREMELY unlikely that A+ games will come to Linux via Steam.
People just need to use whatever works for them and stop this immature bickering.
Get over yourself and tell the other mindless ranting morons to do the same.
Anyway, on to more relevant matters...
I've never even heard of i4i before in my life. Like others have said, it appears to be another "Rambus" situation. It's very obvious that the current patent system is seriously flawed if a company can just sit on an idea or a product and wait for another company to do the legwork before suing them for a bit of delayed gratification.
What products do you own from i4i? Exactly..
Oh, come on. Obviously, not every company deals with end consumers. And that doesn't make their claims any more or less valid.
When I first heard of this case, years ago, I assumed I4I was only seeing dollar signs. But then I read about how MS went after their market in a very focused and predatory way. I'm not sure exactly where the truth lies, but I do believe that the US patent system is badly broken. Whether or not this was a valid case, hopefully MS will get on board with fixing it.
I say, abolish the patent system until revisions are made to make it...sensible.
How would the work of software developers be protected without patents?
How would the work of software developers be protected without patents?
Copyright protects a specific work. All commercial software relies on copyrights. Patent laws, on the other hand, protect the underlying ideas.
The biggest problem the patent system faces is validating whether a given idea is truly novel. A lot of patents have been issued that cover prior art - existing practice or previous patents.
The second issue is that of obviousness. Patents should be limited only to approaches that aren't obvious to the typical practitioner in a given field. This is a bit more difficult to prove than prior art.
Hmmm... maybe the patent system could work in such a way that rewards are offered for anyone who could duplicate the approach, given the problem. A bigger reward could be offered for anyone who can cite prior art. That would enlist market forces in helping to avoid bad patents. The first part would be kind of hard, since patents are usually worded in a very general way. The second part should be pretty straight-forward, though. The cost of the rewards could be covered by the filing fees.
Hmmm... maybe I should patent that!
I still believe patents should be limited to holders which actually plan on pursuing their patents.
Example: Time limitations, if you are granted a patent for "X" idea then you should have to put reasonable effort into developing "X", if you make no attempts to develop "X" within a specific time frame, the patent should be made void and open to the market again.
This method would at the very least kill off the patent trolls, yet still protect patent holders who intend on developing their ideas.
Funny, I just switched two of my flatmate's laptops over to linux as under windows 7 one was having limited wifi network connectivity problems and on the other one the network printer would randomly stop working, but both of them are now running great without any problems on linux.
I do find it rather funny that M$ now wants a change in the patent system though, I guess they don't like it when they are on the receiving end.
Intel vs AMD
Competition huh? Here's the wikipedia short version:
-In 1986 Intel broke an agreement it had with AMD to allow them to produce Intel's micro-chips for IBM; AMD filed for arbitration in 1987 and the arbitrator decided in AMD's favor in 1992. Intel disputed this, and the case ended up in the Supreme Court of California. In 1994, that court upheld the arbitrator's decision and awarded damages for breach of contract.
-In 1990, Intel brought a copyright infringement action alleging illegal use of its 287 microcode. The case ended in 1994 with a jury finding for AMD and its right to use Intel's microcode in its microprocessors through the 486 generation.
-In 1997, Intel filed suit against AMD and Cyrix Corp. for misuse of the term MMX. AMD and Intel settled, with AMD acknowledging MMX as a trademark owned by Intel, and with Intel granting AMD rights to market the AMD K6 MMX processor.
-In 2005, following an investigation, the Japan Federal Trade Commission found Intel guilty on a number of violations. On June 27, 2005, AMD won an antitrust suit against Intel in Japan, and on the same day, AMD filed a broad antitrust complaint against Intel in the U.S. Federal District Court in Delaware. The complaint alleges systematic use of secret rebates, special discounts, threats, and other means used by Intel to lock AMD processors out of the global market. Since the start of this action, the court has issued subpoenas to major computer manufacturers including Acer, Dell, Lenovo, HP and Toshiba.
-In November 2009, Intel agreed to pay AMD $1.25bn and renew a five-year patent cross-licensing agreement as part of a deal to settle all outstanding legal disputes between them
Oh man.. I thought that man's shirt was a design of spots till I realized it was sweat.. What is the point of making millions when one can't even take care of their health. GO EXERCISE.
you ever watch him speak? even if he was olympic class athlete, he would be sweating allot
The current patent system is a load of crap in my honest opinion.Competition allows us to innovate further. Not "I got the patent, you can't do shit" type of crap. The space race for example, we got the the moon because of competition (regardless that it was a competition for the top power in the world).So many good things come from competition, that's why there are laws against monopoly. Yet, for some reason, we have a patent system that seems to strive solely for monopoly? I don't get it.Intel vs AMDnVidia vs AMt(used to be ATI...)Pepsi vs CokeCompetetion.Without it we'd still be in the stone ages...I say, abolish the patent system until revisions are made to make it...sensible.
it needs to be there.
outside of tech patent system mostly works. because a company could just copy the ideas.
like a car. a high end car could be taken apart, and than remade and massproduced and sold, cheaper, and relitivly close to what the expensive car is quality wise.
I also enjoy watching a parasitic, degenerate, and incompetent company like Microsoft pay a lot of money to a small company, since they've destroyed a lot of small companies by their illegal activities. But, the patent system is important even than extracting revenge against an ugly monopoly. Without knowing the actual law, the comments here are probably based on conjecture, but the key point of patents is they should promote innovation, not impede it. It's not clear in many of these cases that it's doing that. Also, Rambus does make useful technology, and has been used in computers, and is used in the PS/3. Of course their incessant litigation sometimes buries that fact.
tech pattents, they are usualy so vauge that, in the case of ios, they tried to pattent the user interface, something thats so basic you never think its something special.
it would be if microsoft patented moving items to trash bin, or items placed on desktop. thats the patents system on the tech (digital) side.