Microsoft Trial Misconduct Cost $40 Million 231
SpuriousLogic writes "The judge who banned Microsoft from selling its Word document program in the US due to a patent violation tacked an additional $40 million onto a jury's $200 million verdict because the software maker's lawyers engaged in trial misconduct, court records reveal. In a written ruling, Judge Leonard Davis, of US District Court for Eastern Texas, chastised Microsoft's attorneys for repeatedly misrepresenting the law in presentations to jurors.'Throughout the course of trial Microsoft's trial counsel persisted in arguing that it was somehow improper for a non-practicing patent owner to sue for money damages,' Davis wrote. The judge cited a particular incident in which a Microsoft lawyer compared plaintiff i4i, Inc. to banks that sought bailout money from the federal government under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. 'He further persisted in improperly trying to equate i4i's infringement case with the current national banking crisis implying that i4i was a banker seeking a "bailout,"' Davis said."
Re:Fol de Rol (Score:5, Informative)
Its just that this company isnt a patent troll. Its a former close partner to Microsoft.
What the transcript could tell us (Score:5, Informative)
If we had the transcript, maybe we could see:
The court transcript, even though it's a public domain document, is only provided to people by the court if they make an account and pay 8c per page. Once you have the page, since it's public domain, you can post it anywhere. RECAP [recapthelaw.org] is a Firefox or IceCat [gnu.org] plugin that can automatically post those public domain transcripts to archive.org so that we can all read them and link to them, and that would help with documenting case law in the USA [swpat.org] on swpat.org, among other things.
Re:Fol de Rol (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-biblical-vengeance-of-i4i/article1253054/ [theglobeandmail.com]
Six years ago, an unusual and powerful alliance approached a tiny Toronto software company with a fateful proposition. Microsoft was helping U.S. intelligence sift through relentless mountains of documents relating to the 9/11 terrorist attacks but had few means to sort them out. This firm, i4i, had the software that could intuit crucial, revelatory patterns that its own software could not.
It wasn't long before Microsoft recognized the value of the firm's technology, and, as it is now famously alleged, pinched it.
Re:First post? (Score:5, Informative)
ODF is immune? According to Groklaw? (Score:5, Informative)
The relevant passage:
"Custom XML" refers to content within the file that is of a different XML format, with a separate "custom schema" to describe that content. The problem with such content is that there is no way for a standard to describe how such data should be interpreted, as it is by definition in a "custom format" and can be any kind of data. That is why "custom XML" is not allowed in ODF documents, and that is one of the reasons why OOXML is such a miserable standard.
And this
Interesting, no? There's one more headline, but only to debunk, Matt Asay's Microsoft's 'Custom XML' patent suit could put ODF at risk. Actually, it doesn't, so far as I know. Custom XML was one of the reasons ODF folks thought the OOXML "standard" was crudely designed, and that it had no place in a standard. It was a big discussion, and basically, to the extent I understood it, the issue was this: that it was a short cut on Microsoft's part, so it wouldn't have to do things in the usual standard way but could just keep things as they were, dumping a lot of processing stuff into the format, where, ODF folks said, it didn't belong. The very name should tell you why.
Re:Penalize client? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know a lot about the intricacies of the legal system, but why is the client penalized for the behavior or mistakes of the attorney? Does the client dictate or approve every word that comes out of the attorneys mouth in court? If the attorney used misleading wording then shouldn't the attorney be censured or fined and not have that penalty included in the actual judgment?
It happens because it is the client who hired the lawyer. If you do something wrong while acting for your company, the company will quite likely be held responsible for what you do. Same with the lawyer. There is always the possibility to sue your lawyers in a situation like this, if you think that they were reckless or guilty for you losing the money. Let's say if your lawyer appears in court drunk and you lose the case because of that, you might very well have grounds to sue.
Re:Only when patents bite Microsoft... (Score:2, Informative)
It's not like Microsoft is not a patent troll themselves. They made more money over monopolies they hold thanks to the current patent system than they will ever lose by being sued by other companies.
It would take truly revolutionary government leadership to change something like patent system in US. I'd honestly rather see copyright and patent system changed than healthcare... but that's just me.
Re:Damnit! I'm torn! (Score:5, Informative)
I RTFA (sorry, I know I shouldn't) before making the comment about contempt of court. The summary is roughly a duplicate of the first half of TFA, but the telling phrase is in the second half:
"All these arguments were persistent, legally improper, and in direct violation of the Court's instructions," Davis said.
Directly violating a court's instructions is generally contempt.
Re:MvP (Score:5, Informative)
While I don't like software patents, I think i4i are not really patent trolls. From what I've read, they actually have a product that plugs into MS Word that does what their patent says it does. So it's not like they applied for a patent and sat around waiting for everyone to adopt XML. i4i have a product, they patented the "technology," and Microsoft simply implemented the same functionality which threaten their product. Like all great American companies, i4i sued.
Re:Dumb law, dumber jury and dumbest lawyers (Score:2, Informative)
IANAL, but am I mistaken in beliveing that any arguments made by Microsoft council could be read in another case. Like in a closing argument a lawyer could say "Microsoft said X about patents in this case, but in this old case they said Y."
Oh, absolutely. Anything you say creates estoppel, even back in prosecution of a patent. "You said here that this is patentable because it requires a specific machine and the patent issued on that basis... But now you're arguing that any machine infringes."
Re:Damnit! I'm torn! (Score:5, Informative)
The problem isn't that Microsoft bundled technology into Word. The problem is that i4i had a patent on said technology, and that Microsoft knew about the patent [informationweek.com] before deciding to "make it obsolete."
I suggest reading the entire patent [uspto.gov] before trying to summarize. It's significantly more complex than what you described.
We're talking about patents, not copyrights. There's a big difference.
Re:Damnit! I'm torn! (Score:2, Informative)
"A computer system for the manipulation of the architecture and content of a document having a plurality of metacodes and content by producing a first map of metacodes and their addresses of use in association with mapped content
[...]
Current practice suffers from inflexibility. Documents combining structure and content are inflexible because they tie together structure and content into a single unit which must be modified together. The content is locked into one structure embodied by the embedded codes. Changes to either the structure or the content of the document require a complete new copy of the document. To make changes to the original document structure a new copy of the document must be created. This new copy can either be saved independently resulting in two versions of the document, or it can be saved over the original--effectively destroying it. This is true even if the content does not differ in any way from the original. Similarly if the structure remains identical but the content changes slightly.
[....]
Yet further, there is a difficulty of resolving the markup codes from the structure. Markup codes have to be differentiated from the content stream they are a part of. This involves designating `special` characters or sequences of characters which should be identified and acted upon. This complicates the task of any routine which must work on the document. Any program or procedure which needs to format or understand the document must know all of the special codes and be able to correctly separate them from the content. All routines which work with the document must have exactly the same model of how the embedded codes are formatted or placed. If any operation misinterprets the code sequence even slightly, or mistakes content for formatting, the document or a part thereof will be reduced to meaninglessness.
[....]
Thus, in sharp contrast to the prior art the present invention is based on the practice of separating encoding conventions from the content of a document. The invention does not use embedded metacoding to differentiate the content of the document, but rather, the metacodes of the document are separated from the content and held in distinct storage in a structure called a metacode map, whereas document content is held in a mapped content area. Raw content is an extreme example of mapped content wherein the latter is totally unstructured and has no embedded metacodes in the data stream. "
You'll have to excuse me, I'm a programmer, not a legal expert. I skimmed the patent a few days ago, but all of that jazz sounds exactly like my summary, only more verbose. Mind elaborating?
Re:Wow (Score:2, Informative)
The State of Texas has no income tax.
Re:MvP (Score:4, Informative)
They may not be patent trolls, but they sure are acting like patent trolls. They applied for a patent on something that has been done for decades, then chose to sue in a district in Texas that is known for automatically allowing all patents and ignoring validity challenges (and thus is the venue of choice for patent trolls). About the only thing not patent troll about them is that they actually had a product at one time. Even still, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck....
Re:Damnit! I'm torn! (Score:3, Informative)
Well how about the fact that the company is in Canada and the lawsuit is taking place in Texas. You gotta be kidding, you seriously think this is legit? This company is a parasite. Even its "product" is just some crapware which plugs into word and it's suspect that there is even a product, it looks like they made that page simply for the court case.
If they just made the page simply for the court case, they've been planning it for over 6 years... http://web.archive.org/web/20030207000848/http://www.i4i.com/x4o.htm [archive.org].
I don't really think they have a case, but a patent troll they are not.
Re:Damnit! I'm torn! (Score:3, Informative)
They are, without looking at the patent, using relative position in a text file to determine how to manipulate the text.
That basic idea should not be patentable. It is beyond obvious that that is doable in many languages and I could have something working in a few hours that encompasses that idea. If they want to copyright an implementation of that idea, more power to them. A patent means they have the legal right to prevent me from implementing something like that, which is BS.
Re:Damnit! I'm torn! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Damnit! I'm torn! (Score:3, Informative)
without looking at the patent
Without looking at the patent, you haven't a clue what the patent is. You can't just look at the title and think you understand the patent. The scope of a patent is entirely defined by its claims. Until you have spent hours picking apart the claims, the specification, and the file wrapper, you don't know how broad the claims are or whether you could implement them, or what "basic idea" they cover. And if you are able to implement them after you've picked through the patent, that's pretty good evidence that the claims were properly enabled. In fact, in some recent litigation, one of our arguments was that the patent was invalid because after working all the way through the patent, we couldn't implement the invention.
Re:Damnit! I'm torn! (Score:3, Informative)
But i4i is a real company, who wrote specialized add-ons to Word, and they patented some method of XML Authoring. I don't see how this is patent trolling. Patent trolling consists of getting something patented, not doing anything at all with said patent, waiting for a major corporation to infringe, and then sue. Microsoft was well aware of i4i and blatantly infringed on the patent. i4i didn't wait some unreasonable amount of time before taking Microsoft to court on this subject.
The patent is taking the tags out (Score:1, Informative)
Where ODF keeps the tags in.
Therefore the patent (how to remove the XML tags whilst keeping the tags and content linked) is not needed or wanted in ODF.
Just the way MS wants to keep with the memory dump and drop XML "tags" around the dump because that's cheaper for their program to do than do XML document PROPERLY.
Re:MvP (Score:3, Informative)
Like all great American companies, i4i sued.
i4i is Canadian.
Re:MvP (Score:5, Informative)
Re:MvP (Score:2, Informative)
The judge nailed M$ $40M for trial misconduct. No question They pulled out every trick in the book and failed. The guilt of M$ in this case is certain.
In the case of M$ vs. patent trolls, remember that M$ is one of the biggest patent trolls themselves, in addition to a convicted patent thief with a $multi-billion legal arsenal.
Re:Dumb law, dumber jury and dumbest lawyers (Score:3, Informative)
I'm all for requiring a college degree to serve on a jury.
How would that help?
My point was regarding specialist knowledge, not that the average texan jury did not have any education. The older population of eastern texas are probably equally likely to have been through college, just not as likely to have been through college recently enough to have been exposed to technology based courses.
To put it in terms of my example on my taxation and healthcare: I am a college graduate who is highly technically literate, however my knowledge of tax law and accounting as pretty much non-existant. This does not mean I cannot make any good decisions, it just means I do not make the best decisions with regards to how to pay less tax. This is the way the world is shifting as to be an expert in any field now requires so many years of specialisation you cannot hope to become an expert in every field.
I have chosen to specialise in software development, so studying that in college for several years does not make me good enough at economics to decide if I am better off under a new taxation scheme or under the old one. For that, I hire an accountant who has specialised in maths and then tax law instead.