Microsoft ordered to pay $388m patent infringement damages
Astonishingly, Microsoft plans appeal
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Microsoft was slapped with a $388m patent infringement fine yesterday, following a lengthy legal row with anti-piracy software vendor Uniloc.
Redmond said it was disappointed with the verdict and added it planned to appeal.
The long-running lawsuit was originally brought by Uniloc USA and its Singapore-based parent company in 2003, in which the firm alleged Microsoft had infringed its patented technology for its software activation methods.
The trial began on 23 March and the jury in the case reached its verdict in federal court in Rhode Island on Wednesday.
"We believe that we do not infringe, that the patent is invalid and that this award of damages is legally and factually unsupported," a Microsoft spokesman told Reuters. "We will ask the court to overturn the verdict."
It is understood that the damages award against Microsoft in the infringement case is one of the largest on record in legal disputes involving patents. ®
COMMENTS
He who lives by the sue, dies by the sue...
OMG, take a look at Dreadmond... Sue-happy bytchbois... They loooooooove the patent when they can capitalize through litigation. But, when someone else gives them a taste of their own medicine and bends them over for a dry-pound, they start crying with their tails between their arsecheeks, waving the white flag and crying unfair. We as a community have been trying to explain to Deadmond all along that software patents should be considered invalid, but all they could see is that quick buck earned in the most disgraceful of ways... through litigation. Instead of taking the karmic bytchslap they had coming to them like they had a pair, they cop out and, out of desperation, use the same defence we have had to use on their arses because they do not like it at all when they are on the receiving end of the Line Of Pain. Maybe Micro$haft will finally realize how much software patents really lay the suction to the stones and will finally change their ways...
Yeah, right... the next opportunity that comes for them to extort a few more million from the competition, you know what will happen... they will be on it like malodorant on the proverbial, I assure you. I have no problem with companies making an honest profit with their products based on the product's merits and marketing, for that is Free Enterprise, and we all like to make sure we have those 3 squares a day and shelter, along with some of our wants fulfilled as well. But when a company thinks that they have to bolster the coffers by suppressing competition through claiming "patent infringement", that is not only bad business practice, it is unethical and worthy of a proper arse whoopin'. A company doesn't deserve a single red cent if they have to sue to get it. Perhaps if enough companies come after them and Deadmond's proverbial sphincter gets sore enough, maybe they will finally get the message hammered into their thick block heads that it would be in everyone's best interest to just drop the whole patent bullsheisse with the quickness.
RIM comes to mind
The law around this makes little sense. RIM lost a long infringement battle even though all of the patents on which the battle was contested were found - before the end of the appeal - to be invalid. At the time of the original case they were valid, so RIM paid $600+ million.
HO HO HO
HO HO HO HO etc etc
Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of bullying scumbags. The only thing wrong is that $388M isn't nearly enough. I say they push it up to 500M
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