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David and Goliath II: i4i Wins (Again) over Microsoft
The small company is i4i, a Canadian company that claimed that the large company had not infringed its patent accidentally, but knowingly and willfully, after engaging in discussions relating to the very same technology in question. For the small company, the functionality in question represented its main product, so when the big company bundled the same technology for free in its own product, i4i’s business was gutted. If you’ve been following the story already, you know that the big company is Microsoft. Yesterday’s big victory was the affirmation by an appellate court of the trial court’s finding of willful infringement. Under the ruling on appeal, Microsoft had been required to remove its infringing code within 60 days, and also pay i4i $290 million in damages due to the lost sales and other harm it had caused. Here are my thoughts on what just happened, and what’s likely to happen next. |
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Comments (9)
And it's so wrong
But the fact that it was a software patent that in all likelyhood shouldn't be valid to begin with...
Sadly, as has been mentioned, we likely won't get the pleasure of seeing Word-Free shelves as they stated they will have a fixed version ready by the injunction date (and probably already do).
It's more of a case of scadenfreude that M$ got a taste of the rules they want to foist on everyone else, but don't want for themselves. They got socked twice:
--first, fthey got caught knowingly violating a patent with the intention of gutting i4i's business
--second, they were denied their usual tactic of plunking down ca$h in exchange for a settlement, so they can continue with business as usual
Besides, for this case, the future (in)validity of the patent is immaterial. If M$ wanted to challenge the patent's validity, they went about it the totally wrong way.
"to turn a negative court ruling into chance to sell more"
oxymoron lolzzz ...
Microsoft spokesperson wrote:“While the outcome is not what we had hoped for, we will continue to advocate for changes to the law that will prevent abuse of the patent system and protect inventors who hold patents representing true innovation.”http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/09/microsoft_loses_supr...
We'd rather treat this as a cost of doing business -- and continue our work tinkering with the system, so we can continue to game it even more efficiently, ourselves -- than actually get the basic problem fixed.
Quoting: We'd rather treat this as a cost of doing business -- and continue our work tinkering with the system, so we can continue to game it even more efficiently, ourselves -- than actually get the basic problem fixed.
I'm all for them tinkering with the system, if it gets rid of, or severely curtails software patents... This case is the one place that I strangely found myself agreeing with M$. Let 'em game software patents right out of existence. Then they can just steal ideas to their heart's contentment.
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It just feels so wrong celebrating the upholding of a software patent.