Microsoft has its own problems...biggest patent case ever
 

Microsoft's Patent Problem

In the biggest patent case ever, the tech giant is getting trounced.
FORTUNE
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
By Roger Parloff


Last month, when Microsoft announced its bellwether decision to award employees restricted stock instead of options, it also made news in a federal courtroom?the kind of news you keep quiet about.

Microsoft suffered utter defeat at a crucial pretrial hearing in what appears to be the highest-stakes patent litigation ever?one in which a tiny company called InterTrust Technologies claims that 85% of Microsoft's entire product line infringes its digital security patents. (See Can This Man Bring Down Microsoft?)

InterTrust's engineers developed and patented what they say are key inventions in two areas: so-called digital-rights management and trusted systems. The technologies are essential to the digital distribution of copyrighted music and movies, and to maintaining the security of e-commerce in general. At its prebubble height, InterTrust (founded in 1990) employed 376 people and marketed its own software and hardware products; today it consists mainly of a patent portfolio, 30 employees, and this lawsuit. An investor group led by Sony Corp. of America and Royal Philips Electronics bought the company in January for $453 million, hoping to convince consumer electronics and tech companies?beginning with Microsoft?of the need to license its patents.

ROFL!!!

i bet bill is shaking in his 20 thousand dollar boots.

If these guys prevail, it does not bode well in terms of the similar issue facing us now... MS v Acacia is a joke.... MS v Sony is serious

Yes Microsoft vs. Sony IS serious.

Can you just imagine Sony losing the ability to sell its VAIO's with Microsoft OS's?

Seriously I might even go as far as blocking windows update for any sony customers with a page that says "Click here to get a compuer from another company because Sony is not a supported manufacturer."

Mike, that's not exactly what I was getting at, but it's related. To your point, it could happen but I highly doubt it. More likely in my opinion is that they come to a mutually profitable arrangement at the expense of those lower down the food chain.

ps - just sent icq auth request to you

This could be good news for Linux!

Not really... didn't you hear about Linux not going to be free because of such and such.. someone copyrighted the code or some bullshit like that.

It was posted on GFY a while back.

Time for FreeBSD!.. -_-

Sony and Microsoft are the real losers in all this. This copyright management shit is sad -- like a bunch of old men in a retirement home fighting over who gets to wear the cock ring...

Gimme a break -- how many people on GFY do you think ever purchased a Microsoft product? :1orglaugh I laugh every time some retarded Windows application tries to access the internet without my permission... I bet after news of this Linux stocks went up!

Ooooh. U follow this closer than I do. :) I'm still using Windows just out of being lazy...

I should just go back to dos.

Linux needs good news right now. I predictr MAJOR changes in the tech world (duh) in the near future and I even (gasp) predict M$'s downfall before my kids graduate.

microsoft would have bigger problems if they did that. they're a monopoly and the courts wouldn't be too happy.

MS is not a monopoly... feel free to go work on a Mac if you want.