Microsoft Found Guilty of Patent Infringement 342
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."
Poetic Justice. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:David vs Goliath (Score:3, Interesting)
Giving any action enough time, it will succeed.
I am sure this being somewhat a large hit to MS's horrible record, it would cause other patent holders to reconsider bringing up cases against the Microsoft.
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.
Microsoft gets sued for using Microsoft products (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft invents Microsoft Access.
Guatamalan inventor patents method of transferring data between the two programs.
Does that make any sense to you? Guy didn't invent either program. He's not some disgruntled ex-Microsoft programmer out to get his just dues. He's not some super, uber-leet programmer who came out with "Carlos's Excel" or "Carlos's Access" years before Microsoft did and simply didn't succeed due to lack of marketing. This is some Joe Nobody who filed a broad, vague patent that the courts were stupid enough to uphold.
Patents (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I don't know the specifics of the case, but given the current rampant abuse of the patent system I'm going to side with the Evil Empire here by default, until I see a decent argument over why this is a fair patent. Most are not. Mind you, MS probably do deserve this sort of thing given their support for software patents.
Carlos the time-traveller! (Score:2, Interesting)
Wasn't Microsoft Access 1.0 released in 1993 or so?
Re:I bet he's thinking.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting back monies lost is fine. Getting some additional monies to make a point is fine. There's no reason to push that out to billions in damages.
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.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Interesting)
no (Score:2, Interesting)
are periods taboo? (Score:2, Interesting)
a program in execution by said computer for controlling operations thereof for receiving user input defining one or more analysis rules to be applied to user specified data from said memory, each said analysis rule being a user defined arithmetic and/or logic test to be applied to user specified items of said data and for controlling said computer to receive and store user entered data defining the alphanumeric text of a diagnostic statement associated with each true result of each said analysis rule, each said diagnostic statement comprised of a user defined alphanumeric text string which the user can program to define the significance of the true result, its relevance or any other expression which provides meaning to the user of the true result of the analysis rule, and for controlling said computer to receive user input controlling which of said analysis rules are to be applied to said data, and for applying said analysis rules so designated to the data designated by said user and returning a true or false result for each analysis rule so applied depending upon the state of the data to which each analysis rule was applied, and for each true result returned by an analysis rule, controlling said computer to store in a file in said memory the user programmed text of a diagnostic statement associated with each true result as a diagnostic in a diagnostic database, and for controlling said computer to receive and store in said memory user input defining one or more expert tests, each expert test comprising a user defined arithmetic and/or logic statement to be applied to one or more diagnostics selected by user input from the diagnostics stored in said diagnostic database, said arithmetic and/or logic statement comprised of mathematical operators and/or logical operators from any logic set such as predicate logic or Boolean logic including at least the AND, OR and NOT functions, each said expert test returning either a true or false result, and for controlling said computer to receive user input defining the text of a super diagnostic statement in the form of an alphanumeric string associated with each true result of one of said expert tests, each said superdiagnostic being an alphanumeric string which the user can program to define the significance of the true result of the expert rule, its relevance or any other expression which provides meaning to the user of the true result of the expert rule, and for controlling said computer to receive user input defining which of said expert tests to execute on user specified diagnostics in said diagnostic database, and for controlling the computer to execute the expert tests so designated, and for controlling said computer to store as a super diagnostic in a super diagnostic file in said memory the super diagnostic statement associated with any true result returned by any said expert test.
Yes, the formatting is right on that.
Re:MS is still the devil, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
(Apparently) the patent in question (Score:3, Interesting)
The same guy appears to have been granted a more recent patent for a related process:
5,701,400, 23 December, 1997 [uspto.gov]
The wording of the second one is very buzzword-laden and overblown ("artificial intelligence"? whatever). I'm still looking over both of them.
The news articles seem to have a number of other things wrong. First, no one with the last name Amado applied for a patent in 1990. The patent which appears to be being discussed was filed for in 1993 (After Access was released).
One small step for small business... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft gets sued for using Microsoft product (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft invents Microsoft Access.
Guatamalan inventor patents method of transferring data between the two programs.
And exactly what is the difference between inventing Excel, or C / C++, Java, Perl, and have people loading software patents based on that technology?
None. This just shows why software patents is bad. It's all mathematics, and they're trying to sell what we already own, to us..
Microsoft deserves this, because they're in the forefront of software patents in USA, Europe and the rest of the world. Not because of revenge, but they have to live with the consequences of their ignorant decisions - Karma pure and simple.
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Interesting)
Reform! (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft is now getting one of those giants like IBM who will constantly be bugged by private patent owners (bogus or real) for money. My experience is that though large companies have many patents, the quality of their portfolio is relatively low as they like big numbers. Small companies, on the other hand, have either a completely worthless portfolio or a small but very powerfull portfolio. And a small production, so the backfire risk of a patent lawsuit towards Microsoft is negligible.
But I do not think a (the?) new US patent system backed by Microsoft will solve that problem for Microsoft. It will probably make it worse. Suffer, dudes...