Microsoft FAT patent falls flat
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com September 30, 2004, 10:04 AM PT. This fourth priority&#39;s main focus has been improving or obtaining CRM and ERP software for the past year and a half.
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Company won't assert patents related to 35 Web services specs--a move designed to ease developers' legal concerns.
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In a preliminary ruling, the government rejected Microsoft Corp.'s 1996 patent on technology for saving files on computers using easy-to-remember names.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft presented oral arguments Wednesday before the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-year-old patent lawsuit filed by AT&T whose outcome could require U.S. software companies to pay fines for patent-infringing software assembled in other countries. At issue in the case is how the court will interpret an obscure section of U.S. patent law, Section 271F, which says that if a U.S. company makes product components in the U.S and supplies them to companies overseas -- and the products assembled from those components result in patent infringements -- the company must pay patent damages for products assembled overseas as well as those made stateside. AT&T originally filed the case in federal court in New York in 2001 claiming that Microsoft infringed on one of its patents for digitally coding and decoding speech in its Windows OS. AT&T set out to recover damages not only from copies of Windows manufactured in the U.S., but also those made in other countries from the master disk of Windows that was sent to those countries and used to assemble computers with the OS installed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in July 2005 upheld a lower-court ruling that Microsoft is liable to pay fines for foreign sales of patent-infringing software even if it was originally created in the U.S. In court Wednesday, Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, an attorney with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, argued Microsoft's case, which claims that the patent law was aimed at closing a loophole that allowed companies to manufacture all of the components of patented inventions in the U.S., but avoid patent liability by assembling those U.S.-made components in other countries. "We believe this law was applied improperly by the lower court to find liability based solely on computers manufactured overseas," Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in a statement. "A U.S. patent was never meant to apply to conduct that takes place entirely abroad." Therefore, Microsoft is asking that the Surpeme Court reverse the lower-court ruling. In a statement, Abha Divine, president and CEO of AT&T Knowledge Ventures, said the company believes that all U.S.-based sources of innovation, including the software development community, can benefit from patent laws that allow for "appropriate and fair" protection of all new inventions and technologies. The outcome of the case will depend on how the Supreme Court interprets the words "components" and "supplies" in the law, said John E. Daniel, partner in law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel's Intellectual Property Department in New York. "Some people have a concern that [the lower court ruling] seems to be beyond what was intended," he said. "When [Congress] passed the legislation,Â it was thinking of making physical components, not software. The comeback is, 'What's the difference?' You still make copies, and Microsoft makes money based on people selling those copies." Microsoft has had some unusual allies in this case, such as its former nemesis the U.S. government and competitor Yahoo, both of whom have filed briefs in support of the vendor's argument. Companies fear that a precedent may be set that will potentially cost U.S. software companies millions of dollars in fines. There is also a concern that U.S. companies will take their research and development offshore to avoid fines, Daniel said.
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Company says software maker has infringed seven patents, does not say which products use the technology.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft may have to pull its Office suite from the shelves in South Korea as a result of losing a patent lawsuit in that country, according to published reports. Several news outlets reported Monday that a South Korean Supreme Court ruling on Friday refused a request from Microsoft that patents obtained by Hankuk Aviation University professor Lee Keung-Haie in 1997 be nullified. The decision strengthens the case of Lee and the company acting as his agent, called P and IB, which filed for damages against Microsoft in 2000 for infringing on Lee's patents, according to a report by the Agence France-Presse . Now that Microsoft's request has been struck down, P and IB leader Kim Kil-Hae said the company and Lee have a better chance at winning damages in their lawsuit and also in stopping the sale of the version of Office that includes the patented technology, according to a report by the AFP. Lee and P and IB are seeking damages of 70 billion won, or about $75 million. In an e-mailed statement through its public relations firm, Microsoft said it does not anticipate any interruption in the sales of Office in Korea, and is positive about its chance in the current infringement case that is still pending. Lee and P and IB filed suit against Microsoft in 2000 for infringing on Lee's patents for technologies that automatically switch the input mode of Office between the Korean and English languages. That case remains unsettled in an appeals court after Microsoft filed a separate lawsuit attempting to invalidate Lee's patents. The patent dispute is just one of Microsoft's legal woes in South Korea. In May,Â South Korea ruled against MicrosoftÂ in an antitrust case, forcing the company to sell a version of its Windows OS without its media player and instant-messaging programs after finding that their inclusion breached antitrust laws. An antitrust case in Europe also has not gone well for the Redmond, Washington, software vendor. In March 2004, the European Commission ruled that Microsoft must sell Windows without media player software in the European Union to compete fairly with rivals there. The ruling alsoÂ ordered Microsoft to provide informationÂ that allows rival server software vendors to design server products that interoperate well with Windows PCs. Microsoft is still embroiled in its legal battle with the Commission and continues to file documents to prove it is complying with the antitrust ruling. The Commission fined Microsoft $357 million in July for failing to comply with the antitrust order, and could face more fines of up to $3 million per day if it does not meet the Commission's latest deadline to prove compliance.
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SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corp. on Thursday lost the first of six patent lawsuits brought by Paris-based telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent, and a federal district court jury set damages at $1.5 billion.
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So, the shape of the Great Battle begins to emerge.  As reported by Fortune magazine, Microsoft's general counsel, Brad Smith, reckons free software infringes on no less than 235 of the company's patents:
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A jury decides the Office technology doesn't impose on another software maker's patent.
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Taiwanese company E-Ten doesn't have much brand recognition in the US yet, but it received some notice last year for releasing the "world's thinnest pocket PC" with its Glofiish X500. Now it's adding one more for the value tier.
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The US Patent Office has made a preliminary ruling that a patent held by Microsoft for the FAT file system is invalid, after lobby group the Public Patent Foundation put forward evidence showing that the technology already existed in the public domain.
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Pledge not to sue over Web services patents reflects the spread of the collaborative development model--as far as Microsoft, even.
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Patent office rejects one of four patents on File Allocation Table format for Windows, though Microsoft can appeal.
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Microsoft has lost a patent battle in South Korea concerning input mode technology in its Office software. The decision could force the Redmond company to halt sales of the popular productivity suite in that country, but it is fighting back.
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NEW YORK - When Microsoft decided to throttle back on some of the features of its Hotmail Web-based e-mail service, it didn&#39;t affect me one bit.
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The $1.5 billion settlement against Microsoft is only one result of the music formatâs tangled history.
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The US Patent and Trademark Office has preliminarily rejected a Microsoft Corp. patent on a system for recognizing computer files, a victory for &quot;open source&quot; advocates who believe