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Microsoft Government The Courts News

Microsoft Wins Summary Judgement in Smart Tag Case 156

Posted by CowboyNeal from the over-so-soon dept.
dan2bit writes "Business Week reports that a judge in Wisconsin handed down a summary judgement today in favor of Microsoft, defending itself from a patent infringement suit brought by small fish Hyperphrase over the embedding of 'Smart Tags' in Microsoft Office. The suit also produced some amusing minutiae."
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Microsoft Wins Summary Judgement in Smart Tag Case More

Microsoft Wins Summary Judgement in Smart Tag Case

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  • The machine just was set off by a few minutes.... yeah that's it. :)

    It is very nice for the courts to be oh-so-forgiving of MS...
    • Isn't Redmond in a different time zone than Wisconsin? Maybe they thought it the deadline was midnight PDT.

    • A likely explanation is that, since Micros~1 thinks the world revolves around them, they filed the briefs before midnight in Redmond. Wisconsin is two hours ahead.

      Schwab

    • Re:Oh no the summary wasn't late (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Bull999999 ( 652264 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @07:05PM (#7059269) Journal
      I thought that many slashdotters want MS to win this case? I guess there's no way to stop slashdotters from bitching.

      If MS loses, they will bitch about stupid patent laws.

      IF MS wins, they will bitch about how courts always go for big businesses.

      • Re:Oh no the summary wasn't late (Score:5, Informative)

        by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @10:20PM (#7060354) Homepage Journal
        "If MS loses, they will bitch about stupid patent laws."

        Microsoft has quite the double standard here on Slashdot. Everybody wants MS punished. They want to see MS hurt. Unfortunately, it is rare that anybody puts any thought into the consequences of punishing Microsoft. Just like you brought up here, it was probably better for Microsoft to win instead of lose. When the Blaster worm made its rounds, people here were saying "Why isn't Microsoft being held liable?" Sounds great, doesn't it? Make Microsoft pay for their 'negligence'. Never mind that somebody was getting away with being a malicious asshole and Microsoft was being punished for it, no no no, Microsoft should be punished for not being pyschic and predicting that an exploit would be.. uh. exploited. If Microsoft were to be liable for defects like that, then in all fairness, individuals of the OSS Community would risk being liable for somebody else's malicious use. So, in short, Linux could find itself vulernable to whatever punishment is dealt to Microsoft in a case like that.

        Be careful about what you wish for. If you want Microsoft to be punished, that's perfectly okay, just be careful that they don't get punished in a way that burns you.
        • Are you sure you're in the right forum? I'm smelling sarcasm here.

  • ugh... (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by zapp ( 201236 )
    Legal humor. I didn' think it could get any worse than "in Soviet Russia...", but I guess it has.

    I tried reading one of the "funny" rulings.. but after about a paragraph i fell asleep.

    • It's there if you can bear the rest... (Score:5, Funny)

      by IthnkImParanoid ( 410494 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:33PM (#7059112)
      Granted, you have to wade through a lot of legal mumbo jumbo, but it was worth it for this:
      Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact ? complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words ? to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions.
      • After this remarkably long walk on a short legal pier, having received no useful guidance whatever from either party, the Court has endeavored, primarily based upon its affection for both counsel, but also out of its own sense of morbid curiosity, to resolve what it perceived to be the legal issue presented. Despite the waste of perfectly good crayon seen in both parties' briefing (and the inexplicable odor of wet dog emanating from such) the Court believes it has satisfactorily resolved this matter. Defend

      • Re:It's there if you can bear the rest... (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You ass-clown. That summation was from head to toe a work of comedic genius. It was completely laden with sarcastic wit.

        How is it the readers of slashdot can decipher a thousand and one technology acronyms a minute but need an hour to "wade through" a highly intelligible and well written legal document?

        • > need an hour to "wade through" a highly intelligible and well written legal document?

          Well written, yes. They have to be very exact, but if you seriously think most legal documents are easy to wade through, you are either a lawyer or a member of Mensa (the latter, of course, assumes that some member of Mensa can stop stroking his ego long enough to actually read one, which is unlikely).

    • Re:ugh... (Score:2, Funny)

      by mvanhorn ( 60852 )
      Maybe the judge should've used <sarcasm> tags? I thought it was pretty funny, (maybe because I could imagine the opinion being read by one of John Cleese's characters.)

  • Remove the scurge from your webpages too (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    <meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true" />

  • Blame Unix (Score:2, Funny)

    by gulfan ( 524955 )
    I'm sure that Microsoft will blame the delay on Unix Mailservers, while at the same time promote Exchange.

  • Filing not late (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:16PM (#7059003)
    Pursuant to the modified scheduling order, the parties in this case had until June 25, 2003 to file summary judgment motions. Any electronic document may be e-filed until midnight on the due date. In a scandalous affront to this court's deadlines, Microsoft did not file its summary judgment motion until 12:04:27 a.m. on June 26, 2003, with some supporting documents trickling in as late as 1:11:15 a.m.

    The message WAS actually sent June 23, but the exchange server was down until the 25th.

  • ... But was the courts clock accurate? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mdvolm ( 68424 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:16PM (#7059005) Homepage
    Unless the clock on the court's server was using NTP or equivalant, it probably was not completely accurate. Of course there is no mention of the clock's accuracy, but how can you make a judgement without this information?

    And anyway, it's four minutes and 27 seconds, c'mon!

    • Insightful? More like Irresponsible. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If there is an important deadline, this should never become an issue. Why even risk a clock discrepency? Its 4:27s after the hours/days/weeks/whatever window they had to do it on time.

      If 4:27s becomes "ok", then what about 8:54s. Its "only" 4:27s after the new ok.

      Just adhere to the damn deadline.
      • > If 4:27s becomes "ok", then what about 8:54s

        Yes, it was highly irresponsible, but WHO FUCKING CARES if it was 4 minutes late? If they were to treat others differently W/R/T lateness, that's one thing, but most courts aren't gonna be dicks about it.

    • Your court's clock may not be accurate! (Score:5, Funny)

      by BigRedFish ( 676427 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @07:17PM (#7059376)

      Would you like to download PrecisionTime from the Gator Corporation?

      [Yes] [OK] [Sure]

    • Frankly, the judge is generous enough to allow filing off-business hours. I typically find that when I wait to pay a ticket till to close to "closing" time, that the court has their clocks 5 minutes faster than the "time Lady". In addition, they always seem to close 10 minutes early on a friday afternoon when I have an important citation due.

      You'll get no sympathy from me!

    • I have been burned by banks clocks and the CCRA (Canadian Customs and Revenue Service) for filing my income tax 27 seconds late since their server was slow as hell.

      Tell me that 2% interest on $18,000 owing for that space of time is not going to piss you off. ($360 for the math impaired)

    • RTFA!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Galvatron ( 115029 ) *
      Yes, that is what the judge thought, too. Do you need reading comprehension lessons or something? Allow me to quote:

      Wounded though this court may be by Microsoft's four minute and twenty-seven second dereliction of duty, it will transcend the affront and forgive the tardiness. Indeed, to demonstrate the even-handedness of its magnanimity, the court will allow Hyperphrase on some future occasion in this case to e-file a motion four minutes and thirty seconds late, with supporting documents to follow up to

      • The judge's decision was outrageous. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ArsSineArtificio ( 150115 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @11:20PM (#7060695) Homepage
        I've clerked for a federal magistrate, and written several orders granting or denying summary judgment, and I found the order extremely surprising. Microsoft was moving for summary judgment, which is a basically a legal determination that it is so obvious that Microsoft will win that the case shouldn't even bother to proceed. As makes sense, the burden of proof is on Microsoft to have a really good reason for claiming this, and the court should be reluctant to grant it.


        Generally speaking, any irregularity should make the court even more reluctant to grant summary judgment. The judge here granted summary judgment even after acknowledging that Microsoft was too late to file - and mocked the plaintiffs for objecting at all! I would expect that Hyperphrase is going to be filing their appeal to the district judge in the very near future.


        The judge is forgiving Microsoft for filing late, and is basically telling Hyperphrase to stop being a pain in the ass.


        Deadlines exist for a reason. If there weren't definite rules for when and in what order things needed to happen in litigation, the courts would be much more inefficient, and people in court would be denied their constitutional right to due process. Yeah, it's funny that Microsoft filed five minutes late - but there's a big difference between some prisoner struggling to represent himself who files five minutes late, and an enormous multinational corporation with gigantic legal resources doing the same thing. A wink and a nod is inappropriate here.

        • Re:The judge's decision was outrageous. (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Apparently the judge had previously ordered the two companies not to screw around with picking at every minor infraction that the other side makes, primarily because it would likely cause the case to drag on and not get to the core of the matter.

        • Well, frankly, I don't care one way or the other, it just drove me nuts seeing someone moderated up for saying "they shouldn't have been punished for filing 5 minutes late" when a simple reading of the article would have pointed out that, in fact, they were not punished.

          That aside, I'm generally inclined to agree with you, to some extent. Yes, they should have filed on time. If the deadline had been set at a specific time for a reason, I'd definately agree with you. If, for example, the deadline had bee

    • Sarcasm alert (Score:2, Informative)

      by CalCudahy ( 541967 )
      Um, I don't think you get the joke. He was being sarcastic at the Hyperphase guys for throwing a hissy fit over Microsoft being four minutes late.

      Wounded though this court may be by Microsoft's four minute and twenty-seven second dereliction of duty, it will transcend the affront and forgive the tardiness. Indeed, to demonstrate the even-handedness of its magnanimity, the court will allow Hyperphrase on some future occasion in this case to e-file a motion four minutes and thirty seconds late, with suppo

      • He was being sarcastic at the Hyperphase guys for throwing a hissy fit

        Good lawyers all, the Hyperphase legal staff was just making sure they left no stone unthrown.

        Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan

    • I'm right in the midlle of writing an e-filing system and our approach is to only allow the document to be processed during court hours. Sure it can be delivered at 11 PM. but the court filing date will be for 8 AM the next day. We will show that it was dilivered at 11 pm though. Some of the courts close at different times depending on day of the week etc. And this seems to be the only way to address that. As for the clock being accurate, NTP is most definatly our protocal of choice, I've met the architect

  • Jokey Judge (Score:3, Funny)

    by Atario ( 673917 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:17PM (#7059012) Homepage
    Counsel used bolded italics to make their point, a clear sign of grievous iniquity by one's foe.


    "Now that's...COMEDY."
    --Slappy Squirrel

  • Obviously... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bodrius ( 191265 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:19PM (#7059036) Homepage
    The problem is that the court has not upgraded to MS Time [bbspot.com].

    In any case, good for the court on putting the ridiculousness of the situation in writing. I mean, if the litigators are going to disrespect the court by wasting its time with ridiculous motions, they may be obligated to follow along, but they can at least put their own disrespect for the litigants in evidence.
    • This is Microsoft's MO for court proceedings. Come in late, file late, burden the other side with tons of meaningless paperwork and court apperances. This was totally about Microsoft being arrogant and showing everyone that GWB was looking out for them.

      This is exactly why Judge Jackson tounge-lashed them to the media! He picked up on this outright condecending attitude to the Law and meant to put the hurt to them.

      In my opinion, the court should have awarded the case to the other side, and made MS f

  • Prior art (Score:5, Informative)

    by bouvin ( 20404 ) <bouvinNO@SPAMcs.au.dk> on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:20PM (#7059042) Homepage
    The concept behind SmartTags is hardly new - one well-known (at least in hypermedia research, which happens to be my area) example would be 'generic link' found in the Microcosm open hypermedia system, which was first published in Andrew M. Fountain, Wendy Hall, Ian Heath, Hugh C. Davis: MICROCOSM: An Open Model for Hypermedia with Dynamic Linking. ECHT 1990: 298-311.

    The generic link designates a link with a selection as source (this would in the simplest case be a string, but could be e.g. a image) and a specific destination. Thus, whereever the selection is encountered, there is a link to the destination. This functionality has been reimplemented a number of times in various open hypermedia systems.
    • ...generic link designates a link with a selection as source...

      I wonder if the quote of the day at the bottom of every /. screen could be construed as a SmartTag. Prior art indeed.

    • Re:Prior art (Score:3, Funny)

      by ZoneGray ( 168419 )
      Prior art? Maybe, but why admit to it? I mean, I undertsand that suing Microsoft could be worth a bundle to a small company. Still, the idea that Microsoft got ideas for Office features from you... I mean, is that something you really want people to know about?

  • Haha.. haha (Score:2, Funny)

    by EdMack ( 626543 )
    This really tore me up:
    four minutes and
    thirty seconds late
    I guess the litigator really should cut down on the caffine in the mornings

    On a more on-topic ms note, I just saw an add on /. by MS saying 'Find out how much easier we've made licensing our communications protocols'..
    We now have to pay to use a protocol? yuwah?
    Heres ya' link to it: http://m3.doubleclick.net/790463/mrs03124_ha_728x9 0_10.gif

  • After some (Score:2, Funny)

    by sodre ( 453685 )
    five minutes and twenty-seven seconds of my life wasted reading that stuff. I move to strike Hyperphrase's lawyers in the head for being so damn annoying.
  • Bizarre really considering they keep losing patent cases, and tend not to be particulalrly aggressive when it comes to their own patents.

  • The judge left an extra surprise for them (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:26PM (#7059070)
    Notice that the court listed the names of all the lawyers on the team that submitted that motion, so that any time someone does a lexus-type search for any one of those lawyers, that filing will come up, thus embarassing them for years to come. The court put some thought into that one.

  • AT LEAST THEY DIDN'T USE ALL CAPS (Score:3, Funny)

    by LeBain ( 524613 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:26PM (#7059072)
    From Hyperphrase's motion to strike the summary judgment motion as untimely: Counsel used bolded italics to make their point, a clear sign of grievous iniquity by one's foe. AT LEAST THEY DIDN'T COMPAIN IN ALL CAPS!!!!! THAT REALLY WOULD HAVE GOTTEN THE JUDGE'S ATTENTION!!!!
    • ALL CAPS WAS USED IN AOL'S COUNTERSUIT, BECAUSE M$ TOTALLY SUXX0R5!

      (this text added to get around lameness filter. You know there's so much text up there I have to add a lot to balance the lameness filter)

    • Re:AT LEAST THEY DIDN'T USE ALL CAPS (Score:4, Interesting)

      by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:39PM (#7059132)
      Lawyers love all caps and they use them frequently on most legal documents. For some reason the law seems to think that being all caps makes the document even more binding than if they used lower case.
      • Lawyers use all caps in certain parts of legal documents because they believe that caps emphasizes whatever they capitalize. However, it's not random -- 99.9% of the time, the text that's capitalized is required or strongly suggested to be included in such a document by law or caselaw. It has little to do with making the document "binding."

        For those that argue that people just skip over the text because it's hard to read or it's like yelling, well, that's a silly argument, and no court would accept that
      • I suspect, but am not sure, that a lot of it is because old documents were handwritten. The only legal documents I have been around that were old and handwritten were property deeds, so it may not be universal.

        In land surveying everything handwritten is written in capital leters for readability. People tend to take more time with capitals than with lower case. It is amusing trying to get my father to type surveying documents any other way than all caps (and all the other surveyors I used to have to deal wi
      • Lawyers love all caps and they use them frequently on most legal documents. For some reason the law seems to think that being all caps makes the document even more binding than if they used lower case.

        All caps is also used whenever you want to make something more difficult to read. Check out the 'disclaimer' on a pack of cigarettes sometime - it's puposely written in sans-serif narrow spaced ALL CAPS in order to make it more difficult to read.

        Legalize through obfuscation!

  • Nothing to do with legality of software patent law (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fredistheking ( 464407 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:28PM (#7059085)
    "Crabb agreed with Microsoft's argument that XML-based Smart Tags operate differently from Hyperphrase's methods and therefore aren't covered by the patents."

    When this issue originally came up many people were hoping that Microsoft might argue against the legality of software patents in general. They completely side stepped the issue. What's going to happen when Ogg gets sued by Fraunhofer and company?

    • Ogg is patent based, but licenesed by a different company to the Ogg guys for GPL usage. The same company [sorry, I forgot the name] also does video codex which the Ogg guys are currently working on. It really doesn't hurt the company as they have several generations newer codex already being sold. I suppose in the Codex world, everyone creates one, and the MPEG group chooses one to use and everyone else pays them. Leaving the loosers to fend for themselfs...perfect canidates for OSS!

      • Ogg and patents (Score:3, Informative)

        by steveha ( 103154 )
        Ogg is a container format. As far as I know, no one is seriously claiming patent protection on the idea of a container format.

        Vorbis is a codec that does the same job as MP3 (only better). The Ogg guys worked very hard, with lawyers vetting the code at each stage of development, to make darn sure that no patents apply to anything in Vorbis. It would have been done a lot sooner if they hadn't had to do this.

        Theora is a video codec, based on a video codec called VP3. The guys who developed VP3, On2, hav
  • I tried to read the minutiae link and was thoroughly confused. Granted IANAL. Could someone who IAL please put up a post in english of what is so interesting/funny about the "minutiae".

    There is something interesting about this artice/post to me though. It's the number of posts saying this is boring/confusing/not funny when just about everyone on slashdot in general is willing to give legal advice/suggestions/jokes regarding the topics at hand.

    Bow to your overlords without sigs.
    • It's "funny" because they are so impossibly petty. The judge (who wrote the full text the little blurbs came out of) obviously just wants to be playing golf and not listening to these two sets of morons arguing about something that should, in a just world, be sent to the fricking morons at the patent office to explain.

  • Go microsoft. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by asscroft ( 610290 )
    The enemy of the enemy is not the enemy. Software patents suck!. I hope MS wins. I also hope they get sick and tired of fighting software patent law suits and use their clout for good for a change and use it to help rid the world of software patents.
  • Yes, it can be really funny. Just the other day I overheard two lawyers talking, and it was so funny:

    Lawyer 1: ...and so I picked up this new client the other day. We see the judge on Tuesday.

    Lawyer 2: Did you get all the paperwork done yet?

    At this point, both of them fell over laughing. It was hilarious!

    I guess you had to be there.
    • Finally, a profession with a worse sense of humor than we engineers are accused of. From a Tulane American Society of Mechanical Engineers t-shirt: "You wish you were as cool...AS-ME."

      Groan...I'm switching majors. Or shooting myself.

  • Just what I needed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dbavirt ( 543160 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:33PM (#7059115)

    This was a chuckle and a half. I can't understand all you who think it was boring. Apparently the $5 and $10 words scared you off.

    I had never seen flyspeck used as a verb before...

  • Microspect (Score:2, Funny)

    by McPLUR ( 586375 )
    Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake hailed the ruling. "As an intellectual property company, we are committed to respecting the intellectual property of others, but we also invest heavily in R&D and we will defend our intellectual property when necessary,"

    She continued "We be payin props ta doz silly azz mofos intalectual propertiez, but they'ze disrespectin' ours. Whats up with that shiznat dogz?"

    ------
  • They used bold italics?!?! Screw diplomacy! This is a full-on war!

  • Patents bad. Even worse than Microsoft. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Thinkit3 ( 671998 ) * on Thursday September 25, 2003 @06:46PM (#7059173)
    Any defeat of a patent is good news.
  • Counsel used bolded italics to make their point, a clear sign of grievous iniquity by one's foe.

    I love well-worded use of language. It just feels good to say well-written prose. One could divert into the technology here, but I would like to take another road.

    This, to me, seems to sum-up American life. We grow up, dream big dreams, educate ourselves, strive for betterment. In the end, we spend our lives making our point through formatting. Is it just me or has America become a bunch of pussies (I'm
    • I simply worry that our local Natalie Portman Overlords In Soviet Russia will begin using this technique to point out every time a clear sign of grievous iniquity appears in a Slashdot comment.

      OK, that actually might be kind of fun for a day or two, but still...
  • Holy crap!

    Insouciance?
    Temerity?
    Magnanimity?

    You think this guy got 750+ on his verbal SAT or LSAT?
    • The temerity of your statement leaves much to be desired.

      The magnanimity of your accepting mine own proposition in insouciance will establish the temperament with which I approbate your further articulations.

      You seemed to list them in least to most common usage - I've seen insouciance the least, but the others are fairly common. Especially when making fun of medieval/fantasy stories :) Unfortunately I didn't get 750+ on SAT :(

      8-PP
  • a glimpse at Hyperphase's patent [uspto.gov] looks like it was to narrowly defined to begin with. Me thinks their lawyer's should have known better.

  • Judge Kent's Pigs (Score:5, Funny)

    by werdna ( 39029 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @07:07PM (#7059286) Journal
    Judge Kent is bar far one of the funniest judges on the federal bench. I strongly comment a quick read of his opinion in this case [clr.org], which concerned a motion drafted in crayon.

    • An excerpt from the parent's link:

      After this remarkably long walk on a short legal pier, having received no useful guidance whatever from either party, the Court has endeavored, primarily based upon its affection for both counsel, but also out of its own sense of morbid curiosity, to resolve what it perceived to be the legal issue presented. Despite the waste of perfectly good crayon seen in both parties' briefing (and the inexplicable odor of wet dog emanating from such) the Court believes it has satisf

    • Re:Judge Kent's Pigs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jonblaze ( 140753 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @08:39PM (#7059812)
      Actually, the briefs weren't drafted in crayon--that memorandum was just another example of Judge Kent bullying from the bench [greenbag.org].
      • While I think that the Green Bag piece makes some good points, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Judge Kent's writing - it rather reminded me of Mark Twain. It's nice to see a judge whose opinions are colourful and not so dull that you fall asleep while reading them.

        Issues of whether such chastisement from the bench is fair or not - perhaps that's something that the Bar Association should look into. I must admit that I have a hard time with the article's portrayal of lawyers as such helpless individu
      • In practice the Green Bag piece is attacking the judge for both publicly criticising the (admitedly not competent) counsel and for not being serious (there's quite a number of references in the article to "bad jokes").

        I came out of reading this article with a sense that a member of the "mainstream" judicial profession was criticizing another for not acting like the majority.

        Personally, even though i'm far removed from the judicial circles, i found Judge Kent's memorandum both original and refreshing. My
    • Erm, that Microsoft judgment is NOT from Judge Kent, if you see the PDF of the order here [kozinski.com] it is clearly signed Magistrate Judge Stephen L. Crocker.

      But both judges are really funny in a caustic way :)
  • I notice slashdotters are exercising their usual incisive wit in the comments section of the Corp Law Blog.

    Keep it up, guys. If the slashdot moderators don't find you funny, I'm sure the corporate lawyers will.

    -Carolyn

  • midnight means midnight (Score:3, Informative)

    by penguin7of9 ( 697383 ) on Thursday September 25, 2003 @08:55PM (#7059911)
    I fail to see the reason for sarcasm. Yes, it sounds like in this case, punctuality may not have mattered. But in other cases, the difference between 11:59pm and 12:01am could be billions of dollars.

    When a court sets a deadline, people should be expected to stick to it. If, in this case, the court decided that it wanted to ignore its own deadline, that's its choice. But would have been perfectly acceptable and entirely reasonable for it to throw out any documents submitted even a second late.
  • So M$ has the courts of the United States at it knees willing to suck or blow Bill or Ballmer whenever required as long as it appears that justice is being "presented ala Survivors" certainly not servered.

    Did we mention terrorism.. ok good.

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