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Microsoft Found Guilty of Patent Infringement
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jun 08, 2005 09:28 PM
from the pay-up dept.
from the pay-up dept.
Spy der Mann writes "Microsoft has been found guilty of patent infringement and ordered to pay a Guatamalan inventor Carlos Armando Amado almost $9m in damages.
The US District Court of Central California court ruled that Microsoft had infringed on his intellectual property and ordered it to pay him $8.96m.
The patent in question is a method to transfer data between Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access using a single spreadsheet."
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Microsoft Loses Appeal in Guatemalan Patent Claim 174 comments
Spy der Mann writes "A year ago, Guatemalan inventor Carlos Armando Amado sued Microsoft for stealing an Office idea he had tried to sell them in '92. They were found to be infringing on his patent and had to pay him $9 million in damages, but they refused and appealed the decision. Today, just a year after they appealed, the Court confirmed the verdict: Microsoft loses. If that wasn't enough, the amount was raised to $65 million for continuing infringement."
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In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:In other news... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Does this mean patents are good? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm so confused!
Re:Like little children... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason it's 'a good thing' is because the more small companies, in some cases companies who are little more then patent whores, can successfully sue the big companies who actually have a say in government policy the better chance we have of reforming the patent system. If this ruling leads to more and more ridiculous rulings costing MS and other big companies millions upon millions of companies, hopefully it will get to the point where the people in power will be hit hard enough in the pocket book to finally have the motivation to change software patents.
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No. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. What will happen is that big companies that have influence over government policy will lobby to have the bar raised so high that small patent holders ("whores", as you say) will not be able to prove a case in the first place.
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Re:Like little children... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh wait. That's not a double standard, that's just us cheering when bad things happen to bad people. Whooddah thunkit?
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Re:Like little children... (Score:5, Informative)
The highest rule is that we all have to live by the same rules.
There is nothing wrong with:
(1) Saying a certain rule is bad and should be changed
*and*
(2) Appreciating the JUSTICE of someone being forced to face the consequences of supporting a bad rule
I say Microsoft should not get hit with software patents - ON THE SOLE CONDITION THAT NO ONE GET HIT WITH SOFTWARE PATENTS.
Microsoft supports software patents and they have absolutely no right to complain or play the victim when the very rule they support comes and bites them in the ass.
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Here's the reason ... (Score:4, Insightful)
You gotta have some sympathy for MS about this.
Re:Here's the reason ... (Score:5, Informative)
EEEEH! Wrong! All that they have to do is demonstrate prior art if they're charged with patent infringement. If they can show such then they should be able to win just about any lawsuit alleging wrongdoing. The entire point of a patent is to claim exclusive original rights or exclusive use.
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Re:Here's the reason ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but that's simply not the case, as I'm currently serving as an expert witness for a defendant in a patent case. It's not enough to have prior art, you must also convince a jury that you have prior art. Good luck getting a jury of everyday schmoes to understand some complex technical issue.
You see both sides will have expert witnesses, and they will both say how much they believe they are right. Both sides will spout technical jargon and the juries eyes will glaze over. And the jury will determine the winner based on things like who most likable. So if you can paint yourself as some poor schlub who got ripped off by MS, then the technical stuff really doesn't matter. Really. It's fucking sad, but that's how it works.
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Poetic Justice. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Poetic Justice. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only good that could come of this would be the remote chance that it could convince MS that software patents are a terrible idea and prod them into backing Red Hat and Oracle's push to reform patents in the US [yahoo.com] and Europe [reuters.com].
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Unfortunately if you look (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft obviously isn't doing this for protection, since the only people who've been suing Microsoft have been tiny parasite IP companies-- the kind of people who a patent shield is useless against. Instead it almost kind of seems to me like Microsoft is brushing off the patent judgments like an elephant swatting flies with its tail, but meanwhile going "wait... you mean patents can be used for evil? Interesting...", as if even though the lawsuits may sting a little they don't mind so much because it's given them some ideas of their own.
I hope to whatever Gods may or may not exist that this is just my overactive paranoid imagination.
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umm... no. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:umm... no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet.
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The cost of waging war on your own terms (Score:3, Insightful)
7.5 days (Score:4, Informative)
If I ran the numbers right, based on their third quarter earnings this will set Microsoft's profits back 7.5 days. That's profit, not revenue.
That worked out to $329/second, or about $40 grand by time Slashdot will let you post another comment.
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WHAT? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then he sued Microsoft???
I know.. i patent a way for Apple Intel to work with Apple PowerPC, no one would ever think of that.
You did't get it (Score:5, Informative)
You didn't get it:
1. The guy came up with a technique to interact with Access and Excel while doing graduate studies and gets a patent.
2. He approached Microsoft Corp. in the 90s and offered them his patent. Microsoft rejects the idea and say they're not interested.
3. About the same time, Microsoft adds the same technique to his products, makes a great deal of it and gets millions in revenue.
4. Then, and only then, the guy went to court, proved that he was the first to come up with the technique , proved that he approached Microsoft, proved that he showed it to them before they ever thought about it and then gets a fair amount of money.
I don't support software patents, but if Microsoft is promoting that nasty game, they have to obey the nasty game's rules.
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Re:You did't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude, seriously, try to read once in a while before insulting people. Every software patent is a joke. This is not about the merits of a particular patent, this is about proving a deliberate attempt to profit from someone else's ideas when those ideas have been previously patented, and that makes a huge difference between this guy vs. Microsoft and SCO vs. IBM. SCO has no evidence nor argument whatsoever.
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I hate Microsoft, but I hate these guys more (Score:4, Insightful)
These companies sit around and brainstorm ideas without ever coming up with anything tangible, then they receive patents on their broad ideas. With the patent in hand, they can then sue anyone and anything that looks to be infringing. It's really sad.
At least when IBM or Microsoft or Sun patent something, they have some tangible product they look to implement. The patent leeches just look for traps they can set for big payoffs later on.
Indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I hate Microsoft, but I hate these guys more (Score:5, Informative)
Um. IBM was infamous for filing patents like crazy and then using these to shake down competitors. The worst as called the "fat lines" patent; I think it essentially covered drawing a line twice with a pixel offset. There was a story in Forbes (posted on Slashdot) a few years back about how IBM decided to extort money from Sun for violating the patent. Sun's engineers gave them a lengthy explanation and told them "see, we're not infringing." IBM's lawyers just shrugged and said "We're just going to find something else you're infringing, so you might as well pay us now."
Gates once remarked (back in 1990 or so) that if the patent situation had always been this bad the computing industry would have been stillborn. He also said that Microsoft needed to get patents purely as a defensive measure. As far as I'm aware, despite Microsoft's generally sleazy business practices they've generally been one of the least vicious and exploitative patent holders.
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new business strategy (Score:5, Funny)
Coming up later in this newscast... (Score:5, Funny)
Yahoo decides to give up fight against Google and shifts all it's resources to making small toys for the quarter machines at grocery stores.
Gnome and KDE finally resolve differences and merge, new name to be KnomE
Secluded inventor in Guatamala buys entire country a round.
Disappointment? (Score:4, Funny)
Why, aren't they usually happy when software patent rights are recognized?
Re:Microsoft gets sued for using Microsoft product (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft invents Microsoft Access.
Guatamalan inventor patents method of transferring data between the two programs.
I don't know if you remember 1992, but back then, you couldn't get Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word to talk. Believe, I tried. I was going to college back then and for one of my engineering classes, I tried to embed an Excel spreadsheet into Word. The spreadsheet has come complex calculations in it and I didn't want to type in the values by hand. Eventually I had to save Excel as text and then open that up in Word. So this getting two MS programs to interact was non-obvious.
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WAIT WAIT READ WHAT HE DID, THEN SPEAK (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft then used the same exact method.
Now, while i totally disagree with the idea of patents like this... It changes the story a bit doesnt it?
Heh, after all this is slashdot.
Re:WAIT WAIT READ WHAT HE DID, THEN SPEAK (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft built a suite of integrated Office applications with built-in functionality that allows seamless transfer of data between the apps. Amado uses the built-in functions to do exactly what those features are designed to do, receives a patent from the braindead patent office, then tries to present his "discovery" to the people who invented the thing in the first place.
There's nothing to understand here except that Amado's idea was exactly why Microsoft put those features into the applications in the first place.
If this doesn't push Microsoft to patent every single thing they ever do or plan to do, I don't know what will. How can they protect themselves from these fleas? The only way is to hold those patents.
These types of lawsuits are what is leading to the demise of intellectual property, not the other way around. It is when people abuse the system by applying for things that are either obvious or developed by someone else that this type of lawsuit occurs.
I hope Amado is happy with that money because he doesn't deserve it.
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Re:WAIT WAIT READ WHAT HE DID, THEN SPEAK (Score:4, Insightful)
Your logic is invalid. Patenting stuff in no way defends you against getting nailed for patent infringment. If this guy came up with it first (which the court ruled he did) then Microsoft COULDN'T have patented it, and filing for other patents in no way helps Microsoft against this. If Microsoft had come up with it first, it STILL wouldn't matter if they patented it or not. Either this guy whould not have been able to patent it, or Microsoft could have gotten the patent tossed out as invalid simply by producing reasonable records documenting that they did it first.
The *only* time patents are useful for "defense" is if you can actually file a counter suit... and you could-have / should-have filed that "counter" suit even if you have never been sued in the first place. You could-have / should-have sued to obtain the money you were owed anyway. Moreover "defensive" patents are usless against "fleas" because the fleas is not offering any product themselves and therefor not infringing any patents at all.
The problem here is that the US SCREWED UP in REVERSING established patent law and EXTENDING patents to software. Math / logic / calculations / mental steps are not inventions.
If patents are going to cover software, well this guy's patent is valid. In fact this guy's patent is better than half the software patents out there. Better than many of the patents Microsoft is getting.
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Re:WAIT WAIT READ WHAT HE DID, THEN SPEAK (Score:4, Insightful)
They deserve no sympathy, and besides, adding value to existing implementations is all the patent system is about. You cannot invent something in vacuum, it HAS to be built on top of existing technology.
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Uhh, they were not an integrated suite of products (Score:5, Insightful)
Bzzzzzzt. They were not an integrated suite in 1990. They were separate products. What allowed them to be integrated into a suite? Maybe ideas like the one this guy patented and Microsoft infringed upon.
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Re:WAIT WAIT READ WHAT HE DID, THEN SPEAK (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:WAIT WAIT READ WHAT HE DID, THEN SPEAK (Score:4, Insightful)
No, as far as software patents go this is about pretty average.
What about that "specially crafted" spreadsheet? Exactly how did he "craft" it? By entering a bunch of formulas or macros?
In other words ordinary programming. What you are pointing out is that he happened to do it in a spreadsheet programming language. No different than programming in C or machine language or perl or PHP. And yes, spreadsheet programming language generally is a univeral programming language capable of absolutely anything you can program in any other language. If you can program speach recognition software in C then you can program it in spreadsheet language. It will merely run more slowly in a spreadsheet.
This is exatly why programmers are almost univerally opposed to software patents. They directly SEE that it is the exact same thing, that programming in ANY computer language is no different than filling in equations in a spreadsheet or writing a complex math equation on a sheet of paper. If one is patentable then they all are. Any program is nothing but a fancy math equation. Numbers come in, you do a long list of basic math steps, and numbers go out.
*If* software is a patentable invention, *if* doing math calculations is a patentable invention, well.... then this guy has a perfectly valid patent.
he just used existing features built into the software
Just like any programmer writing in BASIC or any other language is just using the "existing features built into the [compiler or interpreter] software". It's merely writing instructions in a different language to be run on top of a different host system. No difference.
This is why software patents are fundamentally broken.
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Sad state of affairs. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft obtains software product A.
Microsoft obtains software product B.
Microsoft begins making them work together.
Guy beats Microsoft to market.
Microsoft continues making their products work together.
Guy sues Microsoft, wins millions for being first to patent obvious method made "novel" by the fact that it works on those confusin' new computers.
This would work against Linux.
This crap would work on anything.
Microsoft did *NOTHING* wrong here. They didn't steal his stuff or anything. They just made their own products work together. It probably wouldn't even have been an issue if Excel and Access had been marketed under the same freaking product name.
Ludicrous.
Re:This is ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure they have. Not only do they actively support and defend this sort of patent as valid, they are actively pressuring and extorting other countries to change their laws to make this sort of patent valid.
As far as software patent go, this one is pretty typical. He wrote some software to transform data in a new and useful way. He merely wrote it in spreadsheet programming language rather than BASIC or C or perl.
I agree this should not be a valid patent - NO software patets shoudl be valid. But so long as Microsoft wants a FUBARed patent system then they deserve what they get when they are forced to live inside that system.
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i wanna go home! (Score:4, Funny)
microsoft found guilty of patent infringement!
i've woken up in bizzaro world!
Re:David vs Goliath (Score:4, Insightful)
To Microsoft and the billions upon billions of dollars under their control, however, it's like trying to drain a lake by siphoning it through a straw.
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Re:David vs Goliath (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:David vs Goliath (Score:5, Funny)
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Not exactly felled (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:MS, good stuff? (Score:5, Funny)
Can anyone tell me more about their good/bad experiences regarding IP and Microsoft ?
Dear rd4tech
I've had a good experience, and I definitely look forward to future business with them.
Sincerely
Carlos Armando Amado
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Re:MS, good stuff? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Erm, actually, it's not (Score:4, Informative)
No, we use U.S. Dollars, even for civl awards here in Ahnuldh's Cal-eee-fonya.
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Correction (Score:4, Informative)
His last name is spelled differently, but this appears to be the one. I was an Amiga user in 1990, but this sounds like basic database/spreadsheet usage to me.
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Re:Great idea! (Score:5, Informative)
3) Let someone else use your invention and keep quiet
RTFA, after he invented and applied for a patent, he approached MS with it. They declined to buy it. He was awarded the patent. He claims that MS used his patent. When he found out, he sued.
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