Microsoft Is Sued For Patent Violation Over .NET 288
randomErr writes "As reported by Info World, Microsoft was issued a cease and desist order on February 7 of this year by Vertical Computer Systems. The order was for patent infringement by the current implementations of the .NET framework. Both the .NET framework and Vertical Computer Systems' SiteFlash use XML to create component-based structures that are used to build and operate web sites. Vertical Computer Systems is requesting a full jury trial. If VCS prevails, .NET technology implementations as we know them may completely change and Microsoft would probably have to pay out a hefty sum."
Patents: From bad to worse. (Score:4, Interesting)
Mono? (Score:1, Interesting)
The whole concept (Score:5, Interesting)
One problem is that patents are filed and granted for "inventions" that has too low technical merits. By raising the standard requirements for patents this may help things a bit. One problem is also that the patent offices gets their revenue from the patents, and that doesn't help a bit. Instead that causes the patent offices to grant patents based on the fact that they get the money from it!
In today's world with software development it's a complete minefield to have patents on software. In the end it will limit the functionality of the software we use and require us to pay more for less.
When it comes to copyright, the issue is a bit more complicated. Movies and music has a rather long market lifetime, so a decades issue shouldn't be a problem here. When it comes to computer software the issue is different. In my opinion the copyright should be rendered invalid for commercial software packages whenever support for it is terminated. (Think MS-DOS, CP/M etc.) Even on movies and music there should be a "bail-out" option that allows for the copyright to be released. E.g. when the copyright holder no longer can be located with reasonable efforts.
Re:And you wonder (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Patents: From bad to worse. (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason for this is that if you do, infringement becomes easier to prove for anyone who does happen to sue you, because they can point at you and say "See, these programmers did patent research in this area, then produced a product and/or filed a patent on stuff that does what my stuff does" and if they win, then they will do better in the damages phase because they can present evidence showing willful infringement.
The bottom line was, leave any patent research, including the decision of whether or not to do it, up to the legal department. Don't get anywhere near it yourself.
Kodak vs. Sun set a precedent for this (Score:4, Interesting)
Kodak won $1 billion from Sun [com.com] for (spurious?) patent violations in Java. I would not be surprised to see MS lose this fight.
And considering how similar C# and Java are, I'm surprised Kodak isn't alleging the same patent violation.
Can't Microsoft fight back? (Score:3, Interesting)
bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft patents a lot because they hope to be able to kill open source competition with it--open source competition they have not been able to outcompete otherwise and where their usual monopolistic tricks have failed as well.
Vertical's patent is, of course, bogus. But I do like Microsoft getting hit by these kinds of lawsuits; maybe sooner or later they'll see that software patents aren't the way out for them.
Re:I'm not anti-Microsoft... (Score:1, Interesting)
(There's a slight problem here in that most people aren't sensible.)
Re:Some basic background information (Score:5, Interesting)
There are three things one must keep in mind in figuring out exactly what is covered by a patent. Fundamentally it is the claims that measure the invention, not the title or abstract, or random pieces of the specification. However, the language and terms in the specification must be interpreted in light of the description given in the specification. So, if a term in a claim is an "object library", for example, it wpould be interpreted as this term is discussed in the description. Finally, and relevant to the failing pointed out in the previous paragraph, the scope of the claims is further qualified by the back and forth of the comments and arguments made by the examiner and the applicant. If the applicant tries to avoid a rejection by arguing that a prior art reference feature is not covered by some limitation in the claim the applicant will be bound to this interpretation in any infringement action should a patent be issued. One of the purposes of making rejections, even if it might not be spot on a limitation is to flush out and clarify such possible ambiguities. This is particularly applicable here where an examiner decides to allow a claim previously rejected with no further limitation added. If an applicant is going to squeeze through a narrow "hole" in the prior art not coverable by an obviousness rejection it is important to make sure it is as narrow as possible. By failing to engage the attorney's arguments in the following rejections here the examiner weakened this aspect of prosecution. Instead it looks pretty much like set arguments back and forth, with the examiner essentially saying "OK, I give up, you win" with no further comment.
Fianlly, I see that a continuation [uspto.gov] has been filed, but, so far, has been stripped to just claim 1 of the issued patent (with one misspelling). There will clearly be a preliminary amendment filed with claims applicant wants to prosecute, but have no idea what this might be.
This becomes interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And you wonder (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like a patent on the MCV pattern? (Score:5, Interesting)
If software patents are evil, then we shouldn't be rooting for Microsoft to win the case. We should be hoping they lose and it makes them start pushing for reform of the system.
Re:Sounds like a patent on the MCV pattern? (Score:5, Interesting)
Armchair strategists in the Free Software community have been concerned about Mono and patents from day one, but the reality is that Mono is probably the safest technology on the planet. The reason behind this is simple. If you were going to sue someone over patent infringement would you rather sue Microsoft with its billions of dollars in the bank and millions of customers that rely on every misfeature in its product, or would you rather sue the Mono project which has less money than your average chess club and would happily remove features rather than risk going to court.
The answer is so obvious that it is laughable. If you had a patent that both Mono and .NET used you would almost certainly go after Microsoft. That means that the only company that is likely to sue Mono over patents is Microsoft itself. Even Microsoft knows that if it started suing developers that it would be committing suicide. Ballmer was right when he pointed out that the game is all about developers, and only the stupidest of developers would use Microsoft's technologies for new projects if Microsoft starting suing groups that created technologies that integrated with its development stack. At a certain level everyone that programs is in competition with Microsoft. If Microsoft started throwing its patent weight around developers would flee to other stacks in a hurry.
So what does this mean for Mono? It means that, in this particular case hiding in Microsoft's big shadow is probably the safest place to be. The patent trolls will go after Microsoft and if it turns out that the patent troll actually wins then Mono can always remove the functionality in question long before they face a similar suit. Not that a company that takes a large bite out of Microsoft is going to want to waste money and time trying to shake down a Free Software project.
In the meantime Microsoft will continue to talk big words about Linux and problems with "intellectual property" and the money that is supposedly owed them by Linux users. Ironically this will likely help the patent trolls, like this particular company, in their quest to extract some of Microsoft's money, as it will make it very hard for Microsoft to argue against expensive damages in the case that they lose. After all, Microsoft's own executives have commented any number of times about the need to maintain proper patent licenses.